Absorbing and rich characterizations; Winslet & Fiennes are triumphant; Kross is a true find

Rating: 9/10 (23 January 2009)

THE READER (2008) ***1/2 Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Lena Olin. Absorbing and rich characterizations of Bernhard Schlink's book adapted with finesse and subtlety by David Hare about a German teenager (newcomer Kross, making an excellent break-through performance) who has an affair with an older woman (Winslet in an Oscar worthy turn). Years later as a law student he comes across her path and discovers she has ties to the Nazi party during WWII, leading to her trial that his class is assigned to observe. While the heavy dramatic themes and the tricky balancing of humanizing someone affiliated with the Holocaust is a rather caustic situation, filmmaker Stephen Daldry steadily steers the film past pretension and strum and drang and instead elicits a truly heartbreaking love story with some ingenious plot devices. Fiennes is especially low-key yet efficiently clear-eyed in his endeavor as the latter- day protagonist and his scene with concentration camp survivor Olin is one for the film vault and for those who want to study what superb acting is all about.