Sir! My Liver!

quoth some random sailor on board the Redoubtable when he was swept off deck by a volley of shot from the Victory that severely impeded his alcohol tolerance (with multiple apologies to le docteure Canadienne).

To scribble about more immediate matters, after we watched our representatives follow our good neighbours on their way out, it was intended to review that incomparable parable of freedom, war, and bad choices of personal jewellery: CCC. However, the War Nerd did the job better than we ever would^[1], so we instead abuse the royal pronoun prodigiously as we try to answer another hypothetical question: is it at all possible to review satisfactorily a movie we like? For various reasons related to bile and spleens and the requirement of venting the same periodically from within the safe confines of that spongy mass we call our body, we prefer to review the opposite, particularly when events conspire to put so many of them in our path.

So, consider Sur Mes lèvres, a crime thriller by Jacques Audiard that relates a touching story of thievery as pulled off by a deaf girl and a parolee from one of France's unpronounceable prisons. The film starts off with much camerawork emphasising speaking lips, hinting at what the title translates to: "read my lips", to us multiculturally challenged individuals. Carla is a partly-deaf secretary at a large civil engineering firm, who works hard at her job (and works on her own time drawing up contracts and projects for the greater good of the germ.. er, the firm.) Her job also involves her picking up emptied cups of coffee that weightier individuals leave at her desk, answering the phone, and otherwise doing what a nonentity does best: existing, babysitting a better-looking friend's baby as the friend enjoys the experience of being a "mindless piece of meat" (or thereof, quoting from subtitles is sadly difficult.) The audio follows her hearing aid, with some nicely framed scenes where the volume changes as she adjusts the volume in both load, and crucially, quiet environments.

Our lady of the coffee leads a boring existence, screaming "arbeit macht frei" every now and then, until in a fit of inspiration, she decides to use the local employment exchange to find herself a secretarial assistant with nice hands. In steps the hero, better known from the sequel of a movie we like (of course, he includes a Shocker K'Boo flop in his filmography, to compensate), who is, as mentioned, out of jail. For reasons best known to herself, Carla passes him off as a former employee of an upstanding firm, and trains him up, applying small pokes and jibes that were probably aimed at her during her existence. Much obvious misunderstandings between them later, our man of the jail gets an offer he can't refuse, and finds an opportunity to make a killing. Much plot development later, the prince kisses the frog. Er. Maybe not, but the you get the idea. Notwithstanding the fact that I praise it (which, in some circles, is considered deadly for a movie), it still remains a movie you can watch once. Which is more than can be said for some other blogkill.

[1] No link. Find this one yourself, it's worth it!

Oh, and before I forget: this is a very good movie about the so-called "great war"