The biggest stars in the remarkable French psychological thriller Read My Lips aren't even the actors.

Director Jacques Audiard and his crack sound department, including Marc-Antoine Beldent and Christophe Bourreau, deserve enormous praise for their work on this film about Carla, a near-deaf secretary, and her strange relationship with Paul, a paroled criminal who works as her assistant.

Carla (Emmanuelle Devos) is a lonely, homely thirtysomething who's sexually and socially repressed. She wears hearing aids because of her partial deafness, and this minor disability has isolated her from her peers at the real estate development office where she works. Her career's going nowhere, she playacts in front of her mirror at home and she doesn't have a boyfriend.

Enter Paul (Vincent Cassel), who answers her ad for a secretarial assistant. Even though he's a paroled con and, with his long hair, dagger tattoo and dirty clothes, looks like trouble in a weathered leather jacket, Carla hires him on. Thus begins their strangely symbiotic relationship.

At first, Carla seems pleased to boss him around and to pretend he's her boyfriend when they attend a party. But when she sees her flimsy last chance at a career-advancing real estate case go to one of her rivals at the office, she doesn't hesitate to make use of Paul's uniquely anti-social skills.

Later, Paul makes her return the favour, thanks to her lip-reading skills. He takes another job as a bartender at a club to pay back its owner, Marchand (Olivier Gourmet). Marchand regularly meets with a couple of criminals at his apartment, and Paul gets Carla to watch their conversations with binoculars from the opposite building.

There's big money involved, and Paul wants it before fleeing the country -- but what does Carla really want? You can bet it isn't the cash. Her relationship with Paul and her descent into criminality breathe new life into her and shake her out of her monotonous, suffocating existence. And it just maybe even gives her a shot at love.

Devos and Cassel have tremendous chemistry -- their sexual and romantic tension, while never really vocalized, is palpable. And they make you care for what could have been unsympathetic characters, had less-skilled actors played the parts.

FASCINATING

But it's Read My Lips' use of sound that makes it stand out from the rest of the psychological thriller pack. Audiard makes precise use of his soundtrack -- we often hear from Carla's perspective, and the film is full of moments when the sound is muted and sounds normal only when she turns on her hearing aids.

Even though there are missteps -- the pretentious subplot about Paul's parole officer springs to mind -- Read My Lips is a fascinating, if unsettling film.

It's definitely worth watching -- and hearing.

In French, with subtitles.

(This film is rated AA)

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