Ray Pride

Comparisons can be a pain. How many newspaper writers spend 500 words of a 1,500 word review-cum-synopsis with a description of the "great films" they saw in college and just after? Too many. Jacques Audiard's "Read My Lips" (Sur mes levres) bears some resemblance to Hitchcock's "Rear Window" and I wouldn't be surprised if there were a dozen reviews in the month of its release demonstrating the intense knack the writer has for getting the skinny on the oeuvre of the master. Carla (Emmanuelle Devos) works at a construction firm, eager to rise from secretary to assistant. She's almost deaf, but uses hearing aids and can lip-read. She knows when she's being talked about in the cafeteria by co-workers, a damagingly beautiful woman told repeatedly she's not pretty. She's offered the chance to hire an assistant, and chooses Paul (Vincent Cassel), an ex-con. Their dance, physical and moral, around each other, leads to expectations, staggered senses of obligation. This is a tense, lush, attentive picture. Audiard's not a pasticheur like Brian DePalma, but a genuine artist whose intense, gesturally concentrated thriller understands fear as a heartbeat, power as a commanding glance, as well as the sensuality of an unconsummated relationship. Shot in widescreen, often in extreme close-up, the story's larger emotions encompass power, desire, revenge, yet its power comes from its tactile grace. A hand brushing a pants leg. A reflection in a silver-shedding ancient mirror of a shirt falling from a woman's nude body onto her feet. Lateral and longitudinal compositions that suggest imprisonment (sometimes selected rather than imposed). The animal yelp of a man who's been robbed of thousands. A parole officer struggling to cure his hiccups. And eyes: always eyes.

about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment