‘Read My Lips’: Two Lives, One Tantalizing French Film

“Read My Lips” is a battle of wills and desires set in a thriller context, a violent meditation on the unlikely persistence of love, an investigation of a difficult and compelling relationship between two abused individuals seeking revenge for the unfairness of their lives.

That’s a lot for one film, and the powerful success of “Read My Lips” with such provocative material shows why, after only three films, director/co-writer Jacques Audiard, though little known in this country, belongs in the very top rank of French filmmakers.

The son of successful screenwriter Michel Audiard, Jacques Audiard turned to directing because he couldn’t find anyone willing to handle his scripts. His first two films, “See How They Fall” (sadly never released in this country) and “A Self-Made Hero,” are characterized by an unusual ability to create tension within the bounds of traditional genre plotting while focusing on mature examinations of the complexities of human behavior.

Above all else Audiard, who has a novelist’s gift for creating personalities, is an intensely curious investigator of psychological states. He’s fascinated with character, with who people are versus who they imagine themselves to be in the private corners of their minds. It’s no surprise that Vincent Cassel, the male lead here, told an interviewer that “for the first time, I had the impression of working on a set with adults.”

Though he began as a writer (on “Lips” he collaborated with Tonino Benacquista), Audiard’s specificity about character has helped make him an excellent director of actors. Of the three Cesars, the French Oscars, this film captured, one was for screenplay, one for sound, and an especially deserved one for best actress Emmanuelle Devos, voted in over Audrey Tautou’s crowd-pleasing performance in “Amelie.”

Devos plays Carla Bhem, a secretary-assistant for a Paris-based real estate developer, a not noticeably attractive woman in her mid-30s who reads lips (hence the title, “Sur Mes Levres,” in French) but can’t hear without the help of a pair of mechanical aids.

Harried, hassled and overworked, completely without a personal life, Carla does all the firm’s grunt work, up to and including lying to wives, but is so habitually taken for granted that when her boss suggests she’s so stressed she might hire an assistant, Carla’s first thought is that she might be fired.

Though you can read victimization in Carla’s face, you can also read fury. Her sharp eyes take offense easily; as someone whose life is a struggle, she is sullen and resentful toward those who have things easy and don’t know it. Yet because she does struggle, Carla is a character we want our heart to go out to, even as we’re not sure we can trust her with it.

Paul Angeli (Cassel), the man an agency sends over as Carla’s assistant, is in many ways her opposite. Ten years younger, he’s a rootless, ambitionless drifter newly out of jail who’s got a kind of oily good looks but isn’t very bright. Paul’s so unqualified and over his head as an office assistant he doesn’t know what “outgoing mail” means.

But Carla hires him on the spot. She likes having someone in her life who’ll appreciate her help, and she instinctively senses a kind of bond with Paul, the us-against-them connection of two beaten-down people who are too wary to completely trust each other but who finally have nowhere to turn but each other.

Gradually, intricately, the relationship between this pair gets more complex. Carla asks for the kind of help only Paul can provide for a situation around the office. Then he returns the favor when he goes to work as a bartender for nightclub owner Marchand (Olivier Gourmet of the Dardenne brothers’ “La Promesse”) and starts to have extracurricular ideas.

While the plot twists in “Read My Lips” may be too intensely melodramatic for some tastes, the performances of the two leads are impeccable, just about compelling our belief. Cassel, one of the top young French actors (“Brotherhood of the Wolf,” “The Crimson Rivers” among many others) has reined in his natural magnetism to excellent effect, but it is Devos whose performance absolutely has us in its power.

Audiard is especially good at creating intimate moments for Carla, private reveries when the fantasies about Paul she keeps in check during business hours come out and play. An instant of her standing nude in front of a full-length mirror wearing only one of his shirts is a snapshot of longing impossible to forget. The linked questions of whether Carla can and, more than that, whether Carla should get involved with this man are ones this bravura film tantalizes us with until the very end.

*

Unrated. Times guidelines: some nudity, adult subject matter.

‘Read My Lips’

Vincent Cassel...Paul Angeli

Emmanuelle Devos...Carla Bhem

Olivier Gourmet...Marchand

Olivier Perrier...Masson

A Sedif/Cine B/Pathe Image Production production, in co-production with France 2 Cinema, with the participation of Canal + and the support Centre National de la Cinematographie, released by Magnolia Pictures. Director Jacques Audiard. Producers Jean-Louis Livi, Phillippe Carcassonne. Executive producer Bernard Marescot. Screenplay Jacques Audiard, Tonino Benacquista. Cinematographer Matthieu Vadepied. Editor Juliette Welfing. Costumes Virginie Montel. Music Alexandre Desplat. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.

In limited release.