Miss-Delectable
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allAfrica.com: Botswana: Back Stage (Page 1 of 1)
"Read My Lips" (2002) also known as "Sur Mes Lèvres" showed Tuesday 3rd of July 2007, at 7 p.m. only at the Maru a Pula School, at the Gaborone Film Society's A/V Centre. It is the first of two French films by Jacques Audiard. Next week shows "The Beat That My Heart Skipped".
Carla Bhem, acted skilfully by Emmanuelle Devos, one of France's top actresses of this decade, is a secretary at a construction company, SEDIM, in Paris. She aspires to be more, but has a handicap-she was deaf, but some of her hearing has returned-she still depends on a hearing aid.
When totally deaf she learned to read lips, a skill that remains. She also senses attitudes. When she faints on the job, her boss, Morel (Bernard Alane), tells her to hire an assistant to help her with office work.
Carla's best friend, Annie acted by Olivia Bonamy, is a sexually active woman who needs Carla to provide cover and babysit for her. Carla keeps her own sexuality secret, hidden within her, to be expressed only when she is alone, looking into the mirror.
Carla goes to an employment agency and places a request for an assistant. Soon Paul Angeli, played by the suave and aloof Vincent Cassel, shows up seeking the job. Carla is both attracted and repulsed by him.
When he says he was in Fluery doing time, she doesn't know what he is talking about. "Yeh, Time Magazine," he guesses.
She is still baffled, and he has to explain, "I was in jail". He is now on parole and must report every week to his kindly Parole Officer, Masson, Olivier Perrier. Paul's relationship to Masson becomes a side story in this complicated film, but an interesting, warm and eventually tragic one.
Carla's naivete is balanced by Paul's skittish responses to her controlling and ambivalent kindness. They eat meals together in the cafeteria at lunch break. Before she was alone. He assumes she wants to be more than a friend and offers her all he has to offer. She is shocked.
He asks, "What do you want? I don't get it". She responds: "You think you owe me ... and you pay me with what you have. But it's true. You do owe me". Listen to the level of sound in the film because often it reflects Carla's deafness and use of her hearing aid.
When she finds he has been sleeping in a closet at the office, she moves to help him. She places Paul in an empty flat in a new building that has not yet been approved for occupancy.
When her boss takes a contract off her that she has been working on for three years, she is annoyed. She tells Paul to do something about it, using skills from his criminal past. She gets the contract back, but then she owes him.
What began as if it might be a romantic comedy, turns into a thriller and then is transformed again into pseudo cinema noir. People from Paul's past catch up with him. He owes Marchand - Olivier Gourmet - 70,000 Francs and Marchand is going to get it out of Paul no matter what.
Paul is forced to work nights in a dive run by Marchand, but Carla now doesn't want to let him go. When Paul realizes that Carla's ability to read lips provides him with a means to spy on Marchand, to seek revenge and possibly even achieve a coup; he gets her to help him. She demands that he should come back to work at SEDIM as the price of helping him in his devious tricks.
Most of the film is about how the two of them relate, like a dance between suspicious partners who really want each other, how they can make a killing together, and possibly get away with it, or if not, go down trying.
It is also a study about how two people who have been partially marginalised by society - one due to deafness and the other due to criminal activity - come together, each playing subtle power games, each having something the other wants. "Read My Lips" is about far more than any of these attributes, as it explores the depth of attraction-repulsion and discovery of greater depths between two people. It also deals effectively with a working class milieu in Paris. Because of this it is a fascinating and sophisticated film that transcends any genre.
"Read my Lips" is one hour and 55 minutes long. It is rated 15+. It is in French with English subtitles. Jacques Audiard is the director and he wrote the script with and Tonino Benacquista. The cinematographer is Matthieu Vadepied; the editor is Juliette Welfing; and the music is by Alexandre Desplat.
"Read My Lips" (2002) also known as "Sur Mes Lèvres" showed Tuesday 3rd of July 2007, at 7 p.m. only at the Maru a Pula School, at the Gaborone Film Society's A/V Centre. It is the first of two French films by Jacques Audiard. Next week shows "The Beat That My Heart Skipped".
Carla Bhem, acted skilfully by Emmanuelle Devos, one of France's top actresses of this decade, is a secretary at a construction company, SEDIM, in Paris. She aspires to be more, but has a handicap-she was deaf, but some of her hearing has returned-she still depends on a hearing aid.
When totally deaf she learned to read lips, a skill that remains. She also senses attitudes. When she faints on the job, her boss, Morel (Bernard Alane), tells her to hire an assistant to help her with office work.
Carla's best friend, Annie acted by Olivia Bonamy, is a sexually active woman who needs Carla to provide cover and babysit for her. Carla keeps her own sexuality secret, hidden within her, to be expressed only when she is alone, looking into the mirror.
Carla goes to an employment agency and places a request for an assistant. Soon Paul Angeli, played by the suave and aloof Vincent Cassel, shows up seeking the job. Carla is both attracted and repulsed by him.
When he says he was in Fluery doing time, she doesn't know what he is talking about. "Yeh, Time Magazine," he guesses.
She is still baffled, and he has to explain, "I was in jail". He is now on parole and must report every week to his kindly Parole Officer, Masson, Olivier Perrier. Paul's relationship to Masson becomes a side story in this complicated film, but an interesting, warm and eventually tragic one.
Carla's naivete is balanced by Paul's skittish responses to her controlling and ambivalent kindness. They eat meals together in the cafeteria at lunch break. Before she was alone. He assumes she wants to be more than a friend and offers her all he has to offer. She is shocked.
He asks, "What do you want? I don't get it". She responds: "You think you owe me ... and you pay me with what you have. But it's true. You do owe me". Listen to the level of sound in the film because often it reflects Carla's deafness and use of her hearing aid.
When she finds he has been sleeping in a closet at the office, she moves to help him. She places Paul in an empty flat in a new building that has not yet been approved for occupancy.
When her boss takes a contract off her that she has been working on for three years, she is annoyed. She tells Paul to do something about it, using skills from his criminal past. She gets the contract back, but then she owes him.
What began as if it might be a romantic comedy, turns into a thriller and then is transformed again into pseudo cinema noir. People from Paul's past catch up with him. He owes Marchand - Olivier Gourmet - 70,000 Francs and Marchand is going to get it out of Paul no matter what.
Paul is forced to work nights in a dive run by Marchand, but Carla now doesn't want to let him go. When Paul realizes that Carla's ability to read lips provides him with a means to spy on Marchand, to seek revenge and possibly even achieve a coup; he gets her to help him. She demands that he should come back to work at SEDIM as the price of helping him in his devious tricks.
Most of the film is about how the two of them relate, like a dance between suspicious partners who really want each other, how they can make a killing together, and possibly get away with it, or if not, go down trying.
It is also a study about how two people who have been partially marginalised by society - one due to deafness and the other due to criminal activity - come together, each playing subtle power games, each having something the other wants. "Read My Lips" is about far more than any of these attributes, as it explores the depth of attraction-repulsion and discovery of greater depths between two people. It also deals effectively with a working class milieu in Paris. Because of this it is a fascinating and sophisticated film that transcends any genre.
"Read my Lips" is one hour and 55 minutes long. It is rated 15+. It is in French with English subtitles. Jacques Audiard is the director and he wrote the script with and Tonino Benacquista. The cinematographer is Matthieu Vadepied; the editor is Juliette Welfing; and the music is by Alexandre Desplat.