dromasca Several comments around this movie used the saying 'revenge is a dish served cold' which seems to resume so well the story. A young girl sees her dream to become a pianist broken when a famous pianist in the jury negligently signs an autograph and distracts her during the admission exam to the music school. Many years later we see her grown up as an anonymous secretary hired to be a nanny and than a page turner to the pianist, in fact devising an elaborate revenge.The thrill and the failure of the movie lie both in the cool and sophisticated building of the revenge, with an expectation of violence that never becomes real. The young assistant brilliantly played by Déborah François - looking here like a kind of a French version of Scarlett Johansson - comes from a socially inferior milieu but one who hints to violence (her father is a butcher). Yet her revenge as much we expect to be violent is mostly psychological, she wins the confidence of the whole family just to break the career of the pianist making her fail at a key audition, and to distort the style and cause pain to her son, also an aspiring piano pupil. The quality of the film can be found in the description o the subtle class differences between the characters and in the intellectual and music filled atmosphere that envelops almost all the duration of the screening. Here lies also however the failure of the film, at least for viewers who did not come to watch a pure art film, who will leave I think as I did, with a feeling of in-satisfaction because as the revenge seems to be too cool and non-balanced relative to the breaking a child's dreams in life. As most of the viewers are in cinema theaters to watch something else than a good camera music concerto, I am afraid that they will share my opinion.

dcfemella The Page Turner was directed by Denise Dercourt, who won awards for his other film Lise et Andre. It starts off with Melanie, a little girl who has hopes to getting a full scholarship to an esteemed music school by playing piano. She is passionate and it shows in the way that she plays. The audience has no doubts that she will make it in. Her dreams are tarnished when one of the judges, Ariane Fouchecourt, disrupts her concentration by accepting an autograph in the middle of her recital. She never plays piano again. We see her later as a teenager, who is working as an intern for a successful lawyer. The secretary who she works under tells her that the lawyer needs someone to watch his son, so Melanie takes the job. His wife? The judge who made her lose her dreams. In the beginning we are not sure what Melanie's intentions are, but then we soon realize that it is revenge.The movie dragged, and I kept waiting for the pace to pick up. The interaction between the two main characters could have been a little bit emotion than what we are shown. I understand that it was suppose to be an escalating suspense, but I feel that it lacked a climax. If it were a book, I would have already put it down waiting for "AHA" moment. It seems that too many movies are lacking good scenes until the end. Also, many people seem to have short memories, so they ignore how bored they were for the past 95 minutes, and are happy because the ending was good. The movie did have a denouement, and I was happy for that. Another thing that I liked about the film is that it showed that in revenge, the avenger and the avengee have their good and bad points. My parents loved this film, and I can see why. However, it wasn't for me.

christopher-underwood Perhaps the sort of movie one would aspire to achieve in last year at film school rather than box office entertainment, but this most elegant chamber piece is pretty faultless. Unfortunately the whole thing is rather telegraphed from the start, so whilst this is technically a thriller, we are in the know and only waiting for the inevitable denouement. But, of course, I am being unfair, this is so well put together and nobody puts a foot wrong throughout. Well maybe the cellist, but that's just my little joke! Deborah François' central and crucial performance is a lesson to all. She does not have a mass of lines but she propels the film with her movement and her gaze. In retaliation for a childhood incident she coolly and very calculatedly seeks her revenge, and we helplessly watch it all unfold. We are left to marvel in morbid fascination of what one person can/will do to others, to right what they see as a wrong. Engrossing and not overlong.

film_reviewer-1 Horribly marketed in the U.S. with such a bad (easily forgettable) title. Where are the good producers to lead the U.S. marketing teams (who even fell short with Stardust and oddly enough, with Live Free or Die Hard -- which should have done bigger numbers)? Done with economy and precision, the Page Turner is a little masterpiece. Brokeback Mountain received a lot of attention because of superstar McMurtry and the other savvy writer/ producers. This film deserved the same accolades -- not just because of the gay factor, but because of the updating factor of the French-New-Wave+Hitchcock model, like Brokeback was to the Western model.