| Review:
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There seems to be a growing glut of underage desire
in movies lately, whether real or imagined, among them Benjamin
Button, Gardens Of The Night, Doubt, and now The Reader.
Though The Reader clearly has much more on its metaphorical
mind, in particular perverse passions of the political sort
that can create a morally problematic situation where in
the case of one's country, love is basically blind.***
Directed by Stephen Daldry (The Hours), The Reader
is adapted by David Hare from German writer Bernhard Schlink's
in part autobiographical novel of the same name. Kate Winslet
stars as Hanna, the bedraggled West German workingclass
accidental seductress of painfully horny high school boy
Michael (David Kross as a teen, and Ralph Fiennes as the
adult) coming of age in a comfortable but rigid late 1950's
bourgeois household.***
One day while Michael is heading home from school,
he falls ill and throws up in front of Hanna's seedy apartment
building. And when she comes to his aid and invites him
upstairs to clean himself up, Michael is hopelessly smitten
while watching the cranky loner as she irons her bra, a
chore that females apparently used to fuss about prior to
the women's liberation movement. Though Hanna is no wilting
flower. As soon as the strangely aloof, mysterious sudden
sexpot senses Michael's raging hormones and thwarted libido,
she's ordering Kid - as she is fond of calling him to presumably
keep him at emotional arm's length - into her tub for a
round of sensual bathing, and engaging in a game of mutual
hide and peek with the lusty lad. The heated but conflicted
affair complicated by age and class contrasts soon runs
its course, with Hanna suddenly disappearing without a word
one day. But not before a highly unusual element of foreplay
enters into their steamy, hermetic, forbidden world, namely
Hanna's insistence that he read books to her before each
sexual encounter. Soon Homer, Chekhov, and D.H. Lawrence
deepen their odd couple emotional ties, when not functioning
as some sort of lofty premature sex toys.***
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Final Words:
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To give away anything further
about this captivating combo torrid psychological and political
courtroom thriller would compromise the many unconventional
surprises and provocative dramatic suspense of this film.
Suffice it to say that this story, despite some persistent
plot flaws, is crafted with an immensely engaging array of
daring twists touching on morality versus law. And at the
same time, political corruption of a nation between governments
and its citizens, as well as the Nazi inter-generational legacy.
Not to mention a devil's advocate, brutally candid reconsideration
of the entire notion of just following orders, and deference
to no matter what authority. The Reader, a remarkably brilliant
and subversive guilt by erotic association thriller.*** |
