La Lectrice (The Reader)

A movie which seeks to visually celebrate the joys of reading makes for an interesting premise (and laudable idea). Unfortunately, this French comedy breaks down into episodic bits and pieces that fall flat as often as they score. This film-within-a-film opens with Constance (Miou-Miou) reading the novel La Lectrice to her husband in bed. Constance visualizes herself as the main character Marie--a woman who places an ad in the papers for work as a "reader". Marie's clients include a young boy in a wheelchair, an elderly woman who becomes ecstatic listening to Marx's Das Capital, and a businessman who has become sexually insecure following his recent divorce. In addition to the main problem (the film doesn't really go anywhere), there is an unsettling vacillation in tone. The story moves from realistic drama to broad-based farce in the blink of an eye. And--we might as well say it--watching a person reading is, frankly, boring. Libraries with large foreign video collections may want to consider this mostly innocuous French comedy, but it's not a necessary purchase. (R. Pitman)