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Reviews
Sur mes lèvres (2001)
Not so keen with it.
I watched it back in 2005.
I wrote a review in Portuguese at that time, that I translate here to English. Note that I'm Deaf, so I have my perspective biased toward how Deaf people feel when seeing somewhat "fake-deaf" movies.
Interpretation was not that though. Of course I wouldn't do better, but the movie lacks a lot of how a Deaf person really feels the world. Some parts of the movie where created just to "illustrate" but they don't correspond to the reality. As an example: the hearing aids have a power off button, so there is no need to constantly remove them from the ears! I think that doing things clearly wrong just to have someone understand something is not the good way of doing things.
After half the movie watched, I started feeling that the pseudo-deafness of the actress, incredibly put in a job where what you most see is she participating in meetings and answering phone calls (LOL! You probably would never see a real Deaf working in such a job) was just a pretext to justify the lip reading capacity. I'm Deaf for almost 30 years, I do (I'm forced to, anyway) a lot of lip reading every day and I can assure you that it's not possible to read lips the way she does in the movie (at very long distances and in very bad conditions). There are highly trained men (e.g. in intelligence services) that are able to do something like that, but not that easy.
Other wrong thing in the movie is that the actress is show to be not keen with Deaf Community. Although it is true that many deaf people is so ashamed of their condition that they reject the Deaf Community, it is also true that deaf people in these conditions are not proficient with sign language. How can someone that never signs and systematically avoids Deaf Community be so good in signing? It seemed to me like those old movies where all Asiatics know martial arts.
About the story itself, it was not that special. Someone decided that mixing a fake deaf with some nude scenes, a tattooed criminal, a mafia-like crew and some examples of discrimination and the moralized replies would make a good film, then did it.
I confess that I laugh in many parts of the movie, wondering if they did the entire makeup without even consulting a true Deaf person.
Rui