Didn't do much for me

Rating: 6/10 (4 January 2009)

A film that I rarely, if ever, got caught up in. It felt like the kind of movie that is based on a much better novel. A 15 year old boy (David Kross, played by Ralph Fiennes as an adult) meets up with a strange older woman (Kate Winslet) and, before long, they have a passionate, tumultuous affair. This first section of the film is pretty good, bringing to mind some of the great, erotic movies about sexual affairs, like maybe Last Tango in Paris. Less erotic than that, really, but it's pretty hot, and Winslet is extremely good in these scenes, carrying an unknown weight that is threatening to crush her. In the second section of the film, we learn just what her deal is. If you've seen any commercials or trailers for it, you already know the secret. If you don't, the film might work a little bit better, have a little more suspense. Personally, it was in the second section of the film where I really stopped caring. Kross is a law student observing a trial in which Winslet is the defendant. There's just too many scenes of Kross staring at Winslet from above, confused as to what he should do. Plus, where the theme of sexual politics and broken hearts is well enough done in the film, I thought it did a bad job building up any deep theme upon the historical events that are the focus of the film. It uses a very serious event, but I felt it didn't explore it in any but the most banal way, like it never even happened. I also thought Winslet started to flounder in these scenes. The final part works a tad better, but I just felt uninvolved by that point. European greats Bruno Ganz and Lena Olin have cameos.