La Lectrice

Constance is reading a novel aloud to her lover in bed. The novel's heroine, Marie, places an advertisement and makes a profession of reading aloud to other people. From that point the film lets the two blur; as Constance reads, she becomes Marie. Marie's clients are all different: a boy in a wheelchair, a blind retired general, an executive with no feeling for the work, a lonely woman, a small girl. Each wants something else from the text being read, and the text gets into all their lives. Michel Deville directs the French film; ninety-nine minutes, with Miou-Miou as both Constance and Marie, adapted from Raymond Jean's novel. Its subject is reading itself; the books run from Baudelaire to Marx, and every text turns into something different between the one reading and the one listening.