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Read My Lips
Universal acclaim
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 13 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Foreign
Written by:
Jacques Audiard
Tonino Benacquista
Directed by: Jacques Audiard
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 5, 2002
DVD: July 22, 2003
Running Time: 115 minutes, Color
Origin: France
Language(s): French (with English subtitles)
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Devos, Olivier Gourmet, Olivier Perrier, Olivia Bonamy, Bernard Alane, Céline Samie, and Pierre Diot
This French thriller is an absorbing character study of two lonely outsiders (a deaf secretary and an ex-con), who gradually recognize their mutual dependency.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: The Beat That My Heart Skipped
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official French Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Not a heist film, a thriller, a twisted romance, a film noir or a character study, but a unique concoction that bends all these genres to its vision.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan
Though you get caught up in the criminal element (you really want these people to get away with it), you're also fascinated by who to trust. It's an unusual dance between the awkward and plain that becomes romantic and thrilling -- a subtly impressive feat to say the least.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Expertly sinister, office-as-devil's-playground French thriller.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Since you can't read my lips, read my words: See this movie.
Salon.com Charles Taylor
It's a wholly amoral movie, but it's honestly amoral. And that's a relief for the audience.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
The movie turns into a serious and rather audacious study in the sexiness of a nonsexual relationship, though by the end the audience may be rooting for the two to quit risking life and limb and just go to bed together. [15 July 2002. p. 90]
The New York Times Dana Stevens
Like so many European pictures these days, Read My Lips seems destined to be remade in Hollywood, and it is unlikely to be improved by the addition of vainer actors, a simpler screenplay and flashier direction.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Staff (Not credited)
The tense climax stretches the story's credibility to the breaking point, but for the most part this is noir of an exceptionally high caliber, its sequence of events revealing two complicated and compromised people.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Exciting to watch: The audio disruptions of Carla putting in or taking out her hearing aids and the inventiveness of the way the heist plot is revealed are just a couple of the film's treats.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Not a simpleminded movie in which merely being ABLE to read lips saves the day. In this brilliant sequence, she reads his lips and that ALLOWS them to set into motion a risky chain of events based on the odds that the bad guys will respond predictably.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A finely written, superbly acted offbeat thriller.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Unlike in many character studies, the plot is more than just a simple framework. It is complex and unpredictable, and, as a result, provides the perfect means to better get to know the characters and understand the shifting nature of their relationship.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
Isn't just scary, charming and delightfully unpredictable - it's also smarter and subtler than any new movie out there.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
This is the kind of unusual but involving picture that's ripe for a Hollywood remake - but while you're waiting for the Sandra Bullock-Ethan Hawke edition (it's a good post-movie game: coming up with your own casting ideas), Read My Lips is well worth checking out.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
The comedic first part of Jacques Audiard's film doesn't achieve a seamless connection with its melodramatic second half, but you can't deny the originality of his conceit or the tart cynicism of its development.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
Engaging chemistry between leads Emmanuelle Devos and Vincent Cassel.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
For as long as director and co-writer Jacques Audiard focuses on the central relationship, his stylish film stays on steady footing.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
Improbably, Read My Lips escapes the cynicism of much contemporary neo-noir, if only by a hair, by ending as a love story of delightful crackpot idealism, in which Paul has made a crook and a hussy out of Carla, and she's made a gentleman out of him.
Read Full Review >New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky
Audiard keeps things shaky, grim, claustrophobic, doomed. His film has the feel of documentary, as he follows Clara through the daily grind that pulverizes her. We're in her head, literally.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
The two leads don't have sexual chemistry together, but that's part of the point.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
A gritty thriller on the theme of the con man conned. It works as well as it does thanks to a captivating lead performance by Emmanuelle Devos and the superb direction of Jacques Audiard.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
There's a satisfying craftsmanship to every sequence, the direction is stylish without being show-offy, the plot mechanics are convincing, the pace is breakneck and compelling, and the film does something unique and interesting with its Hitchcockian concept.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
You could describe Read My Lips as a love story, but that would make the movie sound much more conventional than it really is. See it now, before the inevitable Hollywood remake flattens out all its odd, intriguing wrinkles.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Hailed as a clever exercise in neo-Hitchcockianism, this clever and very satisfying picture is more accurately Chabrolian.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
The action is largely psychological, but it's accelerated by Audiard's nervous camera, chiaroscuro lighting, and jangling montage.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Offers you the ostensible bargain of two movies in one -- a character study at the outset and the crime caper that follows. The first picture is intriguing, the second stinks.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Devos is especially fine as a woman whose inner solitude carries depth charges.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The first half is a well-acted psychological drama, but the second half is standard thriller fare with more action than insight.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Paul D. gave it a 9:
Excellent quirky, suspenseful thriller. Good script, direction, and acting by the two leads. Goes in directions you don't expect, and keeps you involved throughout. The characters are fully developed and you are rooting for them by the end of the movie.
David gave it a 9:
Rare instance in caper genre of losers prevailing over their oppressors. As inspiring as Norma Rae.
Phand gave it a 10:
Brilliant acting, creative photography. a great, unique story full of nuances and personalities. How can they get so much into what seems to be a simple tale?
Nolan B. gave it a 9:
A surprisingly fresh and innovative film. I hadn't expected much judging from its misleading trailer, but the movie itself ultimately blew me away. Read my lips: see this movie.
Max L. gave it a 7:
Two movies in one. The first part was very good and intriguing. We never guess where the story is going. The second part was a good thriller but really never had anything to do with the title. Entertaining and a lot better than most movies out there.
Frank C. gave it a 10:
Extraordinary movie--explores not just the intricacies of a relationship that is itself strange and dangerous, but the psyche of a terribly lonely, nearly deaf woman who can, it emerges, read lips, and hence knows things about others that they don't know she knows. What makes this movie special is that it takes the viewer into both her lonely world and nearly makes us partipate in her distorted value structure, which, somehow called to the surface by her boyfriend's criminal propensities, drives forward both the "love" and the "thriller" plots. A stunning evocation of the demimonde that lies, somehow, just below the surface of quotidian.
