Review: Sur mes lèvres / Read My Lips (2001)

Carla Behm (Emmanuelle Devos) is a secretary in a busy construction company. She is somewhat resentful of her deafness, not accepting it but unwilling to open up to others. She longs for a more glamorous life and lives vicariously on the relationships of others, reading glossy magazines during lunch or eavesdropping on lovers' conversations by lip-reading.

Her manager allows her to hire an assistant and she chooses young parolee Paul Angeli (Vincent Casell). She and Paul start an uncomfortable relationship, two disadvantaged people who are constantly jostling for an edge over the other. Later, circumstances force them to forget their games and rely on each other.

What fascinates me is how the story is told mostly from Carla's perspective, which is well captured by the very tight, claustrophobic framing by cinematographer Mathieu Vadepied and (like the more recent Australian film, 'Noise') the pops and squeals of her hearing aid.

Although billed as a thriller, I found that element somewhat incidental and relying on one too many coincidences to move the story along or tie up loose ends. The sub-plot involving Paul's probation officer Masson doesn't do anywhere. However, these petty issues don't materially impact on a very involving and sometimes tense film.

French with English subtitles.

4 out of 5 stars.

Review: The Front Page (1974)

On the eve of the biggest story in Chicago in the 1920s, star journalist Hildy Johnson (Jack Lemmon) tells his editor, Walter Burns (Walter Matthau), that he's quitting his job to get married to Peggy (Susan Sarandon). Burns is as determined to keep his best journalist as Johnson is to leave, and tries various schemes to get him to write the story and keep him in the paper.

This is one of the many film remakes of a Broadway comedy by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and unfortunately, the stage origins of this film are rather obvious in this version. The acting is exaggerated and is uncomfortably shrill in moments, and the staging is obvious. It's only in the frantic climax does the film go beyond its origins.

Still, it's always fun to watch Lemmon and Matthau bounce off each other like the old pros that they are. Credit should also go to Jordan Cronenweth's luminous cinematography which brightens what would have otherwise been a dingy setting.

3 out of 5 stars.

Review: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) - modelled on explorer Jacques Cousteau - is having a bad day: his friend has been eaten by a giant shark, his latest documentary is a yawn, his agent Oseary (Michael Gambon) is deserting him and he is estranged from his wife Eleanor (Anjelica Huston). All he has left is his ship and crew, and even they are in the dumps. When pilot Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), who may or may not be his son from an affair, and journalist Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett) enter his life, he decides to satisfy his thirst for revenge by hunting down the shark and maybe revive his fortune.

TLAWSZ, like earlier Wes Anderson films 'The Royal Tanenbaums' and 'Rushmore', takes a lot of time establishing the off-centred setting and quirky characters, and we're halfway through the film before the film moves beyond its introduction.

Nothing much happens after that.

2 out of 5 stars.

Review: What is History? (1990) by Edward Hallett Carr

This book is a collection of the author's speeches on history delivered in 1961. The speeches address ...

1. the current feeling of pessimism felt by a once-powerful elite that sees the end of the British Empire,
2. why history is not merely a recitation of statistics and facts and that historians should try to understand what has happened,
3. that we should be cautious when using our values to judge the past,
4. how we reinterpret history using different views as our knowledge increases.

Throughout the book, there are constant reminders of how the past, present and future form a continuous narrative of human society. References to other past and contemporary historians make some parts of the book hard to understand. Carr is rather disparaging of the 'big man' and 'chance' interpretation of history, preferring a more sociological view.

Carr died before he wrote a planned second edition to his book, and R. W. Davies presents his notes in an afterword.

4 out of 5 stars.