Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

mdm-11 Our heroine Constance (played by Miou-Miou in yet another role where she seems to play the same character as always...herself) turns her passion for literature into an exciting and profitable "profession". Her little newspaper advertisement eventually brings her a variety of eccentric clients who take advantage of this young woman's services (literally). Hired to read to the disabled, the elderly and the bored, Constance creates, fulfills and participates in her employers' fantasies and peculiar dreams. Warned by the clerk who helped her with the initial advertisement not to be surprised if her ventures yield complications and trouble, Constance seems to not only meet the challenge, but to enjoy the sense of danger and surprise.The degree of tolerance and acceptance of human sexuality displayed in this film may appear over-the-top to viewers unfamiliar with French culture, and French society's extremely liberal social mores. This film was produced in the 1980s, not the 60s (you'd never know it). The "anything goes" mentality is likely to perplex the average viewer, and it may even offend some. The twisted freshness and daring situations eventually seem gratuitous. We "get it" pretty early on, yet the soft-core peep show continues throughout the film. The intertwining of actual literary passages and storyline are fascinating. Unfortunately my fascination with this film ends there.

Cristi_Ciopron I want to indicate a thing of literary merit—a passage from Marx that Constance/Marie reads to the old Bolshevik lady.This makes it the third place where the existence of such exciting things is seized in Marx's works—Noica did this,pointing out such literary beauties in Marx's journalism.The second such place that I found was in Simmel.And this film is the third.I guess that such things could be find in Baudrillard also (and perhaps somewhere in the many French Structuralist Marxists who wrote in the '50s-'70s …);anyway,the pointing of the Marx's works' literary charm is something interesting.The quote given in this film is remarkably well chosen.As a writer,Marx was much better than the cohort of his trite followers.But this was here a literary parenthesis;anyway,the literary source offered the material for a postmodern piece of fun.The film has a level of competence and fun that certainly makes it agreeable and interesting—on a medium level,just enough to maintain it above the ridiculous.The passion for reading transforms, changes invariably into something else—or is already something else,or it is a bridge to a sphere of the life that has a more banal dimension;not even one case of passion for reading,as everyone wants something else from this and reading is but a pretext.So,it is more about various ways of misusing reading.All Constance/Marie's clients want something else from her,another form of fun.One of the main deficiencies is the length:the film is obviously overlong.With this director's footage, a 40' movie would of been much better. Sylvette Héry 's hips and thighs are indeed beautiful and well-filmed,but the sexual side of The Reader is mishandled.The director lacked the necessary cinematographic culture and subtlety for such a movie.In conclusion,the movie is average and less amusing and beautiful than it could be.Better scripted,and much better conceived and made,this could of been one of the best surrealist films.It was obviously above the director's aptitudes.It is interesting to think about who would of been suited for such a movie;a direction could of been explored by Truffaut.It would of been even less surrealist than it is in its actual director's hands,but it would of had style and more charm. Truffaut was the man for the graceful fairy ingenuity needed here.Another direction could of been explored by Bunuel—and then,the surrealism would of reached the heights.Anyway,one feels here the existence of a material for much better movies.It has potential.

Shinwa The Gallic pseudo-sophistication runs pretty thick through this wafer-thin comedy, featuring Miou-Miou as a woman who decides to make a profession out of reading aloud to people. What transpires, of course, is that her sensuality and life-affirming giddiness enter into and transform the texts for her clients. It all has a certain well-measured charm, even if the whimsical wordplay gets overbearing quite often, and ultimately it loses this charm when it is decided that the character Marie is maintaining her dignity when refusing to read aloud pornographic material by de Sade for a geriatric judge and his friends, while finding no moral objection in allowing herself to be seduced by another client. At this point, the movie, which had been discreet in its treatment of sexuality, suddenly whacks the viewer in the face with closeups of the actress's naked crotch, and the whole exercise starts appearing more conspicuously misogynist: ultimately one gets the sense that neither the character nor the actress is in on the joke. This is not aided by the gratingly winsome yet flaccid performance by Miou-Miou, who does not thrive in this kind of role - there is really nothing to play here. There is really nothing to watch, either.

ieaun One evening in bed a young woman (Miou-Miou) begins to read a book called "La Lectrice" to her husband. It tells the story of Marie (Miou-Miou again), who decides to place an advert in her local newspaper offering her services as a reader. This results in her being hired by a wide range of the town's inhabitants, often with unexpected results. A teenage boy in a wheelchair (Regis Royer) asks her to read Maupassant and Baudelaire; the Hungarian widow of a general (Maria Cazares) selects her favourite passages from the works of Marx and Lenin; a businessman (Patrick Chesnais) with no time to read seems to be more interested in Marie than in the book she is reading; a young girl (Charlotte Farran) whose mother is too busy to read to her requests Alice In Wonderland. The town's authorities are constantly suspicious of Marie's new profession and the strange effect it seems to be having on some of her clients.The complex structure of the film is a delight, constantly switching between scenes involving Marie and her clients and those from the books she is reading. Strong sensual overtones emerge as some of the clients confuse the services Marie is offering with those they imagine she is offering.Miou-Miou is excellent in the role of Marie, the southern town of Arles in winter looks magnificent, and the whole thing is driven along by the music of Beethoven. The overall effect is to heighten the viewer's interest in books and reading and make them want to seek out some of the books included in the film. Highly recommended for bibliophiles everywhere.