Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

robert-temple-1 The original French title of this film is SUR MES LÈVRES, lèvres being the French word for 'lips', and there are certainly plenty of lèvres in this film. The story concerns a girl who is deaf without her hearing aids, and even with them is still hard of hearing. Her ability to read lips is fundamental to the extraordinarily ingenious and complex thriller story which evolves in this film. The girl is played by Emmanuelle Devos, and I would say that her performance is so exceptional that it goes beyond brilliant and is one of the best screen performances of any French actress ever (ranking with Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf, for instance). Rarely has any actress mastered such a vast range of subtle nuances in an extremely intimate performance. The perfect director for this particular film, who also jointly wrote the screenplay, was Jacques Audiard. There is probably no other director alive at the present time who is such a master of the incorporation into a film of extreme closeups, without their seeming in any way intrusive or overdone. In this film, we need them in order to see the lips and the eyes. In fact this film is so full of lips and eyes that sometimes they seem more important than the characters themselves. But that is because they really are. There are numerous very good films about deaf people, and also a very good American TV series SWITCHED AT BIRTH (2011-2017) about a deaf teenager, who is brilliantly played by Katie Leclerc, who really is partially deaf (in the series she plays one of the two girls who was switched at birth). Marlee Matlin is a famous example of a deaf actress who won a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar. And sometimes the abilities of deaf people to read lips has entered significantly into film plots. Deaf people actually make very good subject matter for the cinema in general, and such stories can be very emotional and meaningful, as can all serious films involving people who have any kind of physical handicap, since it shows us vividly what they are going through as they struggle to compensate for their handicaps. One of the finest examples of this type of film is NEVER FEAR, aka THE YOUNG LOVERS (1949), directed by Ida Lupino, which is a marvellous example of how to make a film about a physical handicap without being maudlin or condescending. The other thoroughly remarkable performance in this film is by Vincent Cassell, who plays an emotionally backward and rather oafish small time criminal who has just come out of prison. He applies to Devos's company for a job and she takes pity on him, because he too, like herself, is struggling against all the odds. He has almost no training or education and has never even made a photocopy or been in an office before, despite the fact that he is to become her office assistant. She covers for him and conceals from her colleagues that he spends every night sleeping in a sleeping bag in the company's lavatory. This strange pair slowly bond to one another in a most touching way, as two of life's outcasts who team up to try to overcome their respective debilitating handicaps together. Cassell beats up and threatens a dishonest colleague of Devos who has been preventing her from getting commissions on jobs, so that the man leaves the firm. But all of these developments are mere preliminaries to set the scene for what is to follow. The main plot of the film then involves a level of complexity and ingenuity which really is extraordinary. Just to give an example, Cassell discovers that a crime is afoot, and he persuades Devos to watch the plotters through a window, from a rooftop through binoculars, and over a series of evenings to write down what they are saying from reading their lips, in order to discover where and when the crime will be committed. The film is a very exciting and first-rate thriller with terrific character development and protagonists who are thoroughly three-dimensional. The film is truly superb and a real classic.

samkan This movie just pulls you so deeply into the two main characters. I popped it into my laptop without even reading the cover (let alone reviews) and was intrigued for two solid hours. Two lost ships from two different worlds collide. The sexual tension that brews between a secretary and a criminal is almost palpable even without hardly any physical contact. Toward the end I couldn't decide which I wanted more: Our hero and heroine to pull off their caper or simply consummate their passion. RML could've done without a curious subplot and a traditional 100 minutes would have been plenty. I'm nitpicking though. After a series of Netflix, Blockbuster and local library duds this movie restored my faith in great film making.

CRT_Gunslinger This film has a rotting core of flexible morality, and yet a quirky sense of justice. So many of the regular Joes among us would love to "stick it to the MAN". The "MAN" in this case is represented by several different characters. Mr. Keller, who Carla reports to at her office. Later, Paul owes 70 large to Mr. Marchand the club owner. And then there is Paul's Parole Officer. There seems to be so much question about this last character's side story. Reviewers point it out as a weakness in an otherwise well crafted subterranean game of ping-pong between our two protagonists, escalating tit-for-tat until their lives change dramatically. They are beholden to each agent of the "MAN". One or both could be fired, killed, or imprisoned if they don't do as they are told.The film has a sense of relief at the end. Carla finally gets laid. Her boss is forced out for being a jerk. Mr. Club Owner is a pulpy mess in his own bathroom. They get the $money$. And... they need not worry about reporting in to the Parole Officer, because HIS moral weakness leads him to stash his wandering wife in the basement (or whatever the police found to arrest him). It is a critical subconscious trigger to the lock tumbler that wound us up so tight. Never mind that someone else may get Paul's file later to supervise his release; for the moment they are free! They might even get away with it! Woohoo...They STUCK IT TO THE MAN!

Henry Fields Carla (Emmanuelle Devos) is a deaf girl, but she can hear thanks to one of those ear-devices. She works at a property developer enterprise as a secretary, and she seems to be the laughing stock of the office, the weirdo. She's shy, solitary, she dresses like a nun, and she's definitely isolated. Her saturday night's date usually is her best girlfriend's baby. Once she was a totally deaf person, and now she isn't; but it seems like that isolation typical of the deaf goes beyond the hearing itself. Now she's needing a personal assistant at the office, and applies for one at the Employee Office. They send Paul. Paul (Vincent Cassell) is an ex-convict, an ex-thief. He gotta find a job and change his ways in order not to come back to jail. Carla gives him the job, and there begins an strange relationship between them: she desperately needs someone to share her life with, she needs to fall in love. He has some old debts to pay (that kind of debts that you MUST pay), and she'll find some Carla's skills so useful in order to solve his problems. Though it was released in 2001 in France, it has just reached Spanish's screens (of course, Steve Seagal's and Van Damme's productions get to our screens right on time); and it's been a great surprise. When you're thinking about quitting on watching new cinema releases suddenly you find movies just like Sur Mes Levres. A dramatic thriller, an story of losers, and of people in search of redemption and happiness. Emmanuelle Devos displays one of the best performances of the latest french cinema: another cold-as-ice french actress that makes a hit out of her lack of expressiveness and his strange beauty; her eyes, her lips, they say it all. Those scenes in wich she's talking to herself, sort of making a rehearsal of his next date with Paul, are so tender and funny. Mr. Cassell (Monica Belluci's husband -can you believe it???-) plays the perfect ex-convict: he REALLY looks and acts like he's just left his dark cell, no doubt his phisique helps a lot. His pressence in the screen is just amazing. PS: There's sort of a parallel story in Sur Mes Levres: some sequences refers to Paul's social worker, a mid-age man whose wife has suddenly dissapeared. Ok, this story makes no sense among the rest of the movie (or maybe I missed something), but it does not smudge the final restults. My rate: 8/10