"The Reader" ** (out of four): A young boy in post-war Germany has a torrid affair with an older woman, only to find out years later that she's a Nazi war criminal, in director Stephen Daldry's overwrought adaptation of the Bernhard Schlink novel.

In Berlin, in the mid 50s, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg and thirty-something Hanna Schmitz meet-cute when she finds him vomiting from Scarlet Fever outside her apartment. She walks him home where he spends several months in recovery. Once he's well enough, he brings flowers to her door as a "thank you". Almost immediately, one thing leads to another and they begin a series of what would surely have been labeled "booty calls" had the term existed back then. Many of the early scenes in "The Reader", director Stephen Daldry's overwrought adaptation of the Bernhard Schlink novel, feature Michael and Hanna in various states of undress. Hanna is most comfortable when she's calling the shots; she decides when they will make love and when Michael will read books aloud. It seems Hanna is enraptured by having books read to hear, and Michael is only too happy to oblige.

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