1279-1280 Read My Lips / The Beat That My Heart Skipped

[jbeall]

it's a good thing I really enjoy movies that center around crime/criminal activities because this seems to be Criterion's favorite genre lately

TBF, the good folks at Criterion seem to have always loved crime films: think of all the Melvilles, Beckers, Dassins, Suzukis etc., they've released over the years, to say nothing of lone releases of films by Sautet and others, and the Nikkatsu Noir Eclipse set. If they were releasing fewer of these films in recent years, it's probably because they'd already released everything they could get the rights to!

[stephstilley]

oh i'm not complaining, i could watch nothing but crime movies for the rest of my life and be happy lol just something i've noticed recently

[CSM126]

The Beaver That My Heart Skipped

[domino harvey]

I enjoyed the first half of Sur mes levres more than the second, as I think the idea of hiring an ex-con for an office job he’s not qualified for and then using him as muscle to get ahead/get even with meddling coworkers is a great comic idea. I like that both leads give and take and use their leverage over the other in not entirely pure ways. The more traditional noir aspects later in the film are more familiar and less interesting to me, and I thought a few of the actions of these characters was more than a little Dumb Plot-y.

I also thought the time devoted to the parole officer for not much payoff was a mistake— I didn’t watch the deleted scenes so I don’t know if they pop up but I gather from Audiard’s comments that this was part of the original structure but he cut all the other minor characters’ details

[Matt]

I also thought the time devoted to the parole officer for not much payoff was a mistake— I didn’t watch the deleted scenes so I don’t know if they pop up but I gather from Audiard’s comments that this was part of the original structure but he cut all the other minor characters’ details

The deleted scenes do include the parole officer and what was originally planned for him. They only run about 9 minutes total, so they're worth watching (with the commentary). Audiard realized even before filming the scenes that he wanted to change the ending and what happens to the parole officer, but the producers insisted he film the ending that was in the script first. Honestly, all the cuts Audiard talks about having made in the script and in the final film were exactly the right choices, and I think he could have easily cut the rest of the parole officer's scenes that don't include Paul (Cassel) as well. That said, one of the reasons I love the four-film run of Audiard's from Read My Lips through Rust and Bone are the rough edges like this. The script here is wonderfully tight, parceling out just the information you need to get you through the scene and not giving any indication of what might come next. So it's not suspense in the Hitchcockian sense that you know what's going to happen and you're just watching the mechanism spring, it's more that you know there's a mechanism at work but it's not fully revealed until it's sprung. And then there are little things like the parole officer or Carla's friend with the baby that don't impact the story or bear on the plot, but maybe they're little red herrings or little air holes that allow the film to breathe for a moment. They sort of add to the overall moral atmosphere of the film where people are just doing what feels good or what gets them ahead and damn the consequences. By comparison to everyone else around them, Carla and Paul are saints for having a thimbleful of restraint. Audiard did have plans to connect every single character in some way, and when I heard him talk about that in his interview on the disc and in the commentary over the deleted scenes, I'm so thankful that he didn't do that because it would have turned the film into something like Crash (the bad one).

I'm reminded of the probably apocryphal idea that Persian rug-makers intentionally include small imperfections in their weaving because only Allah can make something perfect. And so Audiard's films are slightly shaggy to avoid the airlessness of perfection. (Ditto with Desplechin's films.) That said, I think Audiard had good instincts in this four-film run that he has neglected to pay attention to in his more recent work. Dheepan and The Sisters Brothers are awful films, nothing but loose ends, and Emilia Pérez is a near-total disaster with some admirable intentions.

[domino harvey]

You should watch Les Olympiades, it shows there’s still juice in there somewhere (I haven’t seen any of his other recent films though, but I will eventually for Cesar completion purposes)