Although "The Reader" costars gifted Ralph Fiennes and also features a young actor named David Kross, it is Kate Winslet's haunting performance that gives the film its greatest success.

The narrator is Michael Berg, introduced in the Germany of 1995 as a successful attorney played by Fiennes. Extensive flashbacks alternate with more modern scenes throughout. In 1958, when he was 15, he was stricken with scarlet fever on a street and helped home by a strange woman named Hanna (Winslet).

Once Berg has recovered, he goes to find Hanna to thank her. She is 36, but that doesn't stop her from almost immediately seducing the boy.

This seduction eventually develops into a more complex relationship. Hanna likes to be read to and soon Berg is reading her everything from "Tintin" to "Lady Chatterley's Lover." The affair ends all of a sudden, and the next time Berg sees Hanna it is under starkly different circumstances. It is years later; he is in law school, taking a seminar that involves going to a Nazi war-crimes trial, and there, at the defendant's table, sits Hanna.

From here on in, "The Reader" is at its strongest, as its concerns with the guilt-ridden interplay between generations, whether it is even possible to come to terms with what people we love have done, gain a sharper focus.