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.

The story is slow to start but grows into a well-done film. I had to suspend suspend disbelief at the film’s starting premise (no performance would ever be interrupted), but enjoyed the music (Shostakovich!) and really loved the progression of character development for the rest of the film.

I thought Ariane crumbled a bit too much to be believable, and that Melanie was a bit too much of a blinking doe. The movie would have been more powerful if Ariane retained more of her initial confidence, and if Melanie had emoted a bit more. I was also disappointed that, despite the fact that the director is a musician, the two main musical mid-performance stumbles were not at all credible.