Possible spoilers...
In the evening, Constance reads the novel "the reader". She likes this novel so much that she ends up identifying with the heroine of the novel, Marie. Her job is to read several pages of any book to her customers including a disabled teenager called Eric, a stressed businessman or a little girl whose name is Coralie...
Michel Deville, the director transmits us the joy and the comfort her main character brings to her customers reading pages of Baudelaire, Carroll or Marguerite Duras. Marie thanks to her nice voice, her passion of reading, her shiny presence make people happy and eventually makes the spectator happy. In a way, like "the hairdresser's wife" (1990), a beautiful movie by Patrice Leconte, "la lectrice" is one of these rare films where you smile during almost all the projection. It is the opportunity for Miou Miou to find one of her very best roles too and she offers us a delightful composition. She's the real major asset of the film.
"La Lectrice" is a smart, poetic movie with sparkling dialogs and ingenious sequences where the pleasure of words joins the pleasure of pictures. Another good point: a rightly chosen classical music mainly used in the moments where you see Marie walking down the streets of Arles between two reading sessions. The music gives the movie an impression of lightness and well-being. Besides, I feel that everything here breathes joy of living and even if the end of the movie remains a little dark (Marie by refusing to read an extract from a Sade novel is becoming jobless), we can detect a message of hope in Constance's intention of becoming a reader: reading must be conserved in a society where books occupy a less and less important place.
Michel Deville's movie won the Louis Delluc price in 1988. It was only fair.
In the evening, Constance reads the novel "the reader". She likes this novel so much that she ends up identifying with the heroine of the novel, Marie. Her job is to read several pages of any book to her customers including a disabled teenager called Eric, a stressed businessman or a little girl whose name is Coralie...
Michel Deville, the director transmits us the joy and the comfort her main character brings to her customers reading pages of Baudelaire, Carroll or Marguerite Duras. Marie thanks to her nice voice, her passion of reading, her shiny presence make people happy and eventually makes the spectator happy. In a way, like "the hairdresser's wife" (1990), a beautiful movie by Patrice Leconte, "la lectrice" is one of these rare films where you smile during almost all the projection. It is the opportunity for Miou Miou to find one of her very best roles too and she offers us a delightful composition. She's the real major asset of the film.
"La Lectrice" is a smart, poetic movie with sparkling dialogs and ingenious sequences where the pleasure of words joins the pleasure of pictures. Another good point: a rightly chosen classical music mainly used in the moments where you see Marie walking down the streets of Arles between two reading sessions. The music gives the movie an impression of lightness and well-being. Besides, I feel that everything here breathes joy of living and even if the end of the movie remains a little dark (Marie by refusing to read an extract from a Sade novel is becoming jobless), we can detect a message of hope in Constance's intention of becoming a reader: reading must be conserved in a society where books occupy a less and less important place.
Michel Deville's movie won the Louis Delluc price in 1988. It was only fair.