Quirky, repressed women seeking human connection are suddenly prevalent among recent foreign cinema, first with the bubbly daydream Amelie, then the more sadistic character study in The Piano Teacher, and now we have Read My Lips, which makes a sexual thriller out of the genre.  Carla (Emmanuelle Devos) is the quintessential reserved female heroine (read:  deep down she is actually quite physically attractive), an introverted wallflower who gets pushed around her job because she’s a woman, because she is disabled (near deaf actually) and because she is so shy.  When she gets swamped with secretarial duties she is asked to hire an assistant and she uses this opportunity an excuse to essentially place a personal ad, naively trying to hire a good-looking, “well groomed” romantic interest.  Instead what she gets a grubby, sloppy ex-con named Paul (Vincent Cassel), and though he is unattractive and untrained in almost every manner, Carla finds herself inexplicably drawn to him.  Quickly her dream of working next to a man and slow building a relationship fades when Paul’s mob debt catches up to him, forcing him to quit the job Carla set up for him and throwing him back into a life of crime.  But either Carla is desperate or Paul has some mysterious sexual hold on her and she feels compelled to take his verbal abuse and help him rob his mob boss.

Read My Lips is at its best when it invites the audience into Carla’s sexless, lonely world.  She thrives on stolen glances behind her hair, noticing subtle gestures and reading people lips when they are not looking.  Her steady fascination with Paul as interesting as it is bewildering; behind Carla’s withdrawn mannerisms it is obvious that Ms. Devos is a very attractive actress, and what she sees in Paul’s unwashed griminess and his mistreatment of her is a mystery.  Strangely enough it seems that Paul’s criminal element has somehow seduced Carla, bringing out a faint, flickering dark side in her, and though she roughly dismisses his one violent sexual advance, it is clear that she subtly gets off helping him spy on his employer (Paul uses her lip reading ability to find out what his boss is up to).  As their crimes escalate from petty theft to blackmail and robbery Carla reaches out socially and sexually through crime in a way she could never do without Paul dragging her into his mess.

It is rare for a film with so little sex to be so damn sexy, and Carla’s sexless, off and on relationship with the mean-spirited Paul dismisses the kind of relationship clichés that plague movies where two unlikely, lonely people meet.  The fact that Paul is certainly no prize catch, even in the eyes of someone as lonely as Carla, and his own lack of initial interest in her makes her none-physical attraction to him almost as interesting as the aspects of her own empty existence (where she judges but nevertheless devours her friend’s sexual escapades, and constantly inspects her naked body in her mirror, looking only at her body and not her face).

The first third of the film, which centers on Carla’s work and her life, is the strongest, most seductive section of the film.  The setup is more interesting than the execution-we get flashes of the poor girl and her everyday life:  from her eavesdropping of co-workers; her sternly but avidly listening to her friend’s sex problems; her co-workers dismissal her and her work; and the solace she takes when she removes her hearing aids and can live in a world by herself-Carla’s day to day activities are far more interesting than the crime she and Paul eventually try to pull.  Even though her relationship with him is sly, subtle and always carries an atmosphere of secrecy and internal personal space, midway through the film Read My Lips allows itself to shift the focus away from the slow, sexual study of Carla and more on the “thriller” aspect of the romance, and with that comes Paul.  The problem here is that Carla is strangely attracted to the man, but I certainly am not, and as the film’s attention shifted to give Paul equal screen time as Carla I was begging for Ready My Lips to return to the stuffy, muffled sexuality the film had when Carla was working with Paul in her office.  Obviously Paul’s criminal escapades help Carla branch out, but this did not require a character shift, and a similarly unnecessary side plot involving Paul’s parole officer taints this otherwise enjoyable, seductive thriller and it is such a shame it ended up focusing more on the thriller and less on the seduction.