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By Dan Leone

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TO SAY THAT the French like their Hitchcockian thrillers is like saying they occasionally have opinions on gourmet cuisine; at this point, the Gallic love of Hitch's psychosexual suspense template is such a part of their cinematic character that it's taken for granted. France's national brand of femme fatales and hapless heroes is a film subgenre usually filed under Chabrol, but in Jacques Audiard's Read My Lips, the usual front-and-center homage shell game takes a backseat to spin-the-bottle power struggles. Clara (Emmanuelle Devos) is a deaf office worker who wears her frumpiness like a cloak. Forever being mocked, exploited, and pushed over for promotions, she silently waits her turn to gain an upper hand. Enter Paul (Vincent Cassel), a rough-trade ex-con whom Clara hires on as a temp despite his complete lack of real-world job experience. Out of pity and animal attraction, she sets him up with an apartment and covers up his mistakes; in turn, he poses as her boyfriend at social events and "convinces" a coworker to stop stealing her work. When Paul is drawn back into the criminal underworld, Clara's new thirst for danger and her singular talent for lipreading pull them both deeper into dark waters. Audiard's deft handling of the comic and crime-story aspects maneuver the movie away from your typical copycat potboiler into the desperate territory of longing and belonging. Devos and Cassel work their beautiful-loser roles so craftily that you almost don't see them angling for dominance. In the end, though, his brutish crudeness and her hitherto-untapped craftiness complement each other so thoroughly that you're surprised this match made south of heaven didn't occur sooner. (David Fear)