The Reader (15): Kate Winslet, the star of Stephen Daldry�s polished but pedestrian wartime drama, always comes across as such a game sort. There aren�t many Oscar-nominated actresses who would send themselves up so spectacularly as the Titanic star did on Ricky Gervais�s television show, Extras.

Star rating: ***
Dir: Stephen Daldry
With: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Lena Olin

Kate Winslet, the star of Stephen Daldry's polished but pedestrian wartime drama, always comes across as such a game sort. There aren't many Oscar-nominated actresses who would send themselves up so spectacularly as the Titanic star did on Ricky Gervais's television show, Extras.

Between now and the Oscars, the Extras episode has the potential to haunt the Winslet girl like Marley's ghost. It might even count against her winning a statuette, should jurors be so minded. That would be unfair, not only because she is by far the best thing in The Reader, but also, more importantly, because there are better reasons to take against Daldry's picture.

In Extras, Winslet plays herself playing a nun in a Holocaust drama. Gossiping with Gervais off set, her character scoffs at any notion she took the part for purely noble reasons. "I mean, I don't think we really need another film about the Holocaust, do we? It's like, how many have there been? We get it, it was grim, move on. No, I'm doing it because I've noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust you are guaranteed an Oscar. I've been nominated four times, never won. The whole world is going, Why hasn't Winslet won one?'"

The words were written by Gervais and Stephen Merchant and intended as a joke, but you see where there might be a difficulty? Still, on we plough, giving The Reader, adapted from the bestselling novel by Bernhard Schlink, a chance to impress us in its own right. The story opens in Berlin in 1995, where Ralph Fiennes's swish lawyer, Michael Berg, is preparing for another day in court. From here, Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot) cuts with elegant ease back to a town in West Germany, in 1958, where a 15-year-old Michael (the very impressive David Kross) is making his way home from school.

Ill with fever, Michael staggers into the courtyard of an apartment block, where Hanna, played by Winslet, finds him. After she sees him safely on his way, the youngster repays her kindness with a visit when he is well again. So begins a friendship between the pair that turns into something more.

Hanna is the older woman tutoring her young charge in the ways of love, fearless in her embrace and in her willingness to strut around in the buff. This is difficult territory for any film-maker - imagine a reversal in the roles, with a older man and a girl - but Daldry takes care not to make it seem salacious. This is an arthouse seduction, all clever camera angles and aesthetically ruffled sheets. Giving matters a further veneer of hoity-toityness is Michael's habit of reading to Hanna from the classics. Nothing provokes tears or laughter in this strange woman like a spot of Chekhov.

From 1958, Daldry ventures back and forth until he reaches a courtroom in 1966, where Hanna's past is on trial. This middle section of the film takes an age, with Daldry and his screenplay writer David Hare wishing to pose big questions about shades of complicity and the banality of evil. What takes place instead is a fairly dull tennis match of legal to-ing and fro-ing.

Boredom one can live with; it's the sentimentality in the next section that's harder to handle. While never asking us to feel sorry for Hanna, there's a fearful amount of hand-wringing and emotional arm-twisting going on. Despite Winslet's superbly nuanced performance, it becomes increasingly difficult to take the story seriously, and impossible not to feel put thoroughly manipulated. Much as I could appreciate the efforts of Daldry and his cast, I had trouble buying any of it.

Just when all hope seems lost, there arrives a scene that will either make or break the film for you. It's an extraordinarily powerful, beautifully written exchange between Fiennes and a survivor (Lena Olin), which throws a fleeting but merciless light on proceedings. It's a coup de theatre from the acclaimed stage director, but for this viewer it arrived, alas, too late.

The Reader has been nominated for four Golden Globes (best actress, Winslet, and best director, picture and screenplay). It has persuaded the Hollywood Foreign Press Assocation, who organise the warm-up to the Oscars, that it is the genuine article. Audiences might take more convincing.