Sur mes lèvres [Read My Lips] (2001)

(In theaters, February 2003) Darn typical old-school French film, where a decent eighty-minute thriller is stretched over two dull hours for no good reason at all. In a nutshell, it’s a film about the way a shy deaf professional woman meets an ex-con and how they help each other out dealing with superiors and other criminals. It’s not terribly pleasant and passes no chance to show how truly squalid it is, but it tells a decent story. The beginning is weak (too lengthy) and so is the ending (too unconvincing) but with some judicious editing, this could have been more interesting. Otherwise, well, it’s hard to bother. Heck, there’s even an entire gratuitous plot thread left untied at the end. Maybe if you watch it in fast-forward…