SOUNDING OFF:

Kate Winslet is a fine actress and deserving of the Oscar, but I had issues with her film, “The Reader.”

I can’t remember ever in my lifetime being called a prude. I mean, I’m a product of the ‘60s, a “can you dig it?” sort of guy! But, after this column runs I’m certain to be labeled a prude, or worse.

I’ve long been a fan of the cinema, and I particularly enjoy classic American and British films. Since retiring a year ago, my wife and I attend one or two movies a week. In confidence, we prefer European fare to Hollywood products simply because the films are intelligent and render more thoroughly developed characters and plots.

On Jan. 9, the day it opened, I went to see “The Reader” at a local theater. My wife didn’t accompany me; she was having lunch with a girlfriend. I knew absolutely nothing about the film prior to seeing it, other than it had Winslet as its star and the story had something to do with the Holocaust. I was prepared to enjoy it.

I didn’t.

I was appalled at the film’s exploitative use of nudity and sex: An adult woman is portrayed as having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old German boy. Frankly, it creeped me out. The sex was gratuitous, and unnecessary to advancement of the plot. I know, I could have walked out of the theater but I didn’t.

I read reviews after watching the film and was surprised to see that not a single critic that I read disparaged its excessive erotica. I suppose I’m just a lonely voice in the wilderness.

Had the film been produced 20 years ago, I can imagine Meryl Streep playing the Winslet role of Hanna, the former S.S. concentration camp guard. Like Winslet, Streep would have done a magnificent job, and would no doubt have won an Oscar. But, there would not have been scenes depicting graphic sexual interplay. Those aspects of Hanna’s relationship with the boy would have been inferred, and left to the imaginations of audience members. Most of us would have been quite capable of filling in the blanks!

Why is it standard convention today that we encounter in-your-face eroticism at every turn? Actors of both genders seem keen to jump naked into bed in front of a camera. Are the former co-inhibitors — embarrassment and shame — no longer applicable? I wonder.

Winslet has been awarded an Oscar for her performance, and deservedly so.

She’s a remarkable talent, and hers was a masterful portrayal. But, her film’s unapologetic obsession with sex was unseemly and unwarranted.

And that makes me a fuddy duddy.

JIM CARNETT lives in Costa Mesa.