Read My Lips

Carla Behm is a secretary at a property company, hard of hearing and reliant on a hearing aid and lip-reading. Passed over and poorly treated at work, she is allowed to take on an assistant and picks Paul Angeli, a young man just out of prison with no experience in the business. Each sees something useful in the other: she wants help settling scores with her colleagues, while her ability to read lips interests him for reasons of his own. The arrangement grows into an unlikely relationship built on mutual need and calculation.

Jacques Audiard directed and co-wrote the film with Tonino Benacquista. It was the director's third feature film, and the earliest of his titles listed here, preceding The Beat That My Heart Skipped, A Prophet, Rust and Bone, Dheepan, The Sisters Brothers, Paris, 13th District and Emilia Pérez. Emmanuelle Devos and Vincent Cassel lead a cast of 23 credited performers, among them Olivier Gourmet, Olivier Perrier, Olivia Bonamy and Bernard Alane. Philippe Carcassonne and Jean-Louis Livi produced.

The film runs 115 minutes and was released in October 2001. It holds a critics' rating of 8/10 from 96 reviews, higher than its audience scores of 7.3/10 on IMDb from around 17,000 votes and 7.1/10 on TMDB from 385 votes.