La Lectrice (1988)

Miou-Miou's delicate, nuanced performance is at the heart of veteran French director Michael Deville's entertaining confection. In other hands, the film's story-within-a-story of a professional reader and her indisposed clients could have been precious and saccharine, but Deville and Miou-Miou achieve a bittersweet, gently erotic tone. Even when it becomes clear that our reader is a blank slate onto which her clients project their fears and desires, the director keeps the tone light and romantic, more interested in storytelling and craftsmanship than in the kind of darker, more ironic shadings that a director such as Louis Malle might have brought to the material. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide