Carla, a young secretary, has been a long-time employee of a major property development company in France. Loyal and hardworking, Carla begins to realize her career prospects at the company are stagnant, with her timid personality and so-so looks being the primary obstacle to her advancement. Enter Paul Angeli, a new Secretary assistant, who Carla decides to hire on for assistance. Only 25 years old and fresh out of jail, Paul is completely unskilled, but yet Carla selects him, being a good-looking man who treats her with respect. Jacques Audiard's Read My Lips is a subversive romantic thriller about two very different indivduals who form a special, yet dangerous bond. Paul and Carla are two characters who couldn't be more different but what Audiard has crafted is a dark and strangely poignant look at love and relationships, almost challenging our notions of love as a society by capturing our inability to define it, even though we constantly. This isn't a happy-go-lucky love story but a dangerous one, with Audiard generating an uncomfortable look at the psyhological aspect of romance, using these two troubled characters to showcase the various needs and desires which inhabit all of us. Carla is the definition of a passive character; shy, timid, and still suffering socially due to her lack of hearing from an early age. Paul is the opposite, bold, braze, and sexually acute; the two form a pseudo-relationship that works, each filling a void missing in the other's life. Narrative-wise, Jacques Audiard's Read My Lips is a well-paced, clever thriller that explores love and relationships, dancing the line between between darkness and light.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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