READ MY LIPS

A klutzy, nearly deaf, seemingly unambitious scecretary schemes to get ahead with the help of a sexy, unscrupulous ex-con she has hired as an assistant.

CAST: Vincent Cassel, Emmanuelle Devos, Olivier Gourmet, Olivier Perrier, Olivia Bonamy, Bernard Alane, Cecile Samie, David Saracino, Christophe Vandevelde, Pierre Diot

DIRECTOR: Jacques Audiard

"It is just about the best movie I have seen this year, and I dread thinking how the inevitable American remake with Tom Cruise and PenE`lope Cruz or Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan will manage to mangle its magnificently original concept...'Read My Lips' combines masculine and feminine in a wildly original fusion of distinctive temperaments and skills...As often as I have seen Ms. Devos and Mr. Cassel in the past, I cannot recall ever having been so overwhelmed by their creative intensity. 'Read My Lips' is to be viewed and treasured for its extraordinary intelligence and originality as well as its lyrical variations on the game of love." --Andrew Sarris, The New York Observer

"'Read My Lips' isn't just scary, charming and delightfully unpredictable--it's also smarter and subtler than any new movie out there ...this gritty, twisty, utterly engrossing tale features one of the best uses ever of a physical handicap in a thriller--and boasts a rare understanding of the harassing oppressiveness of office work... succeeds in incorporating flashes of humor into its dark vision of the world without any of that annoying Gallic whimsy in so many French films." --Jonathan Foreman, The New York Post

"Watching Carla unleash her lust, tenderness and occasional rage with Paul is but one of the exhilarating pleasures afforded by writer-director Jacques Audiard's superb psychological thriller...As Paul, the weird, magnetic Vincent Cassel is alternately obnoxious and endearing, just as he should be; as Carla, Emmanuelle Devos is astonishing--a strong, brave, fiercely determined fruitcake you can't help rooting for even when she's at her most rotten...Suspenseful, sexy, finely nuanced and darkly amusing, this Hitchcockian entertainment is a real beauty." --Guy Flatley, Moviecrazed

"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. Its ingenuity will not be hard to replicate, but its gritty immersion in the petty indignities of working life--something of a French specialty in recent years--is unlikely to survive. It is this quality that gets under your skin and turns its two beleaguered losers into genuine outlaw heroes." --A.O. Scott, The New York Times

"...the writer-director, Jacques Audiard, working close to his actors with a camera devoted to glances, reactions, and tiny gestures, gets us to believe that these two lost cases are destined for each other...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." --David Denby, The New Yorker

"Emmanuelle Devos is an actress with a world-class frown. Her fiercely telegraphed disapproval gives this character-driven thriller much of its kick...The action is largely psychological, but it's accelerated by Audiard's nervous camera, chiaroscuro lighting, and jangling montage. The movie shifts from workplace melodrama to neo-noir to deadly romantic caper with a bracing absence of cuteness." --J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

"...a crafty hybrid of dark comedy-of-manners and nail-biting caper movie that sinks its hooks into you and slowly pulls you around several tight corners, with pleasant surprises at every turn...Audiard sidesteps the noir-thriller genre's customary wallow in rococo imagery and moody poetry and, from the grit, smoke and clutter of real-life, establishes a different kind of romantic paradigm." --Gene Seymour, Newsday

"... 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...one of the summer's smarter adult alternatives." --Jack Mathews, The New York Daily News