Kate Winslet may have trouble with Oscar voters over The Reader

When Kate Winslet picked up two Golden Globes awards on Sunday, many in the media assumed she was now set fair for further triumphs at the Oscars. However, that discounts the considerable rumblings of disquiet among Hollywood insiders about the subject matter of The Reader for which she won best supporting actress as a former concentration camp guard who shows no remorse for her past crimes when she is put on trial.

While her role may have impressed the 100 or so members of the Hollywood foreign press contingent who vote for the GGs, will it have gone down well with the near 5,800 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who decide the Oscars? Academy nomination ballots had to be in by Monday evening and according to Academy sources, most had already been sent in before the Globes were presented on Sunday – meaning that few if any Academy members will have been swayed by her award.

Members of the Academy have previously heaped glory upon films which depict the true horrors of the Nazi regime, such as Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List and Roman Polanski's The Pianist, but The Reader, directed by Stephen Daldry, is a very different matter. The Los Angeles Times said: "Kate Winslet portrays a woman who dispatched Jews to gas chambers and doesn't seem obviously repentant later when she's tried in court. How can anyone, especially Jewish Oscar voters, embrace that?"
 
That view is shared by the New York Times's influential movie critic, Manohla Dargis, who recently described the film as "fatuous". "You have to wonder who, exactly, wants or perhaps needs to see another movie about the Holocaust that embalms its horrors with artfully spilled tears and asks us to pity a death-camp guard," she wrote, adding that while the film purported to be an exploration of post-war German guilt, "mostly it involves Kate Winslet, her taut belly and limbs gleaming under the caressing light, deflowering a very surprised-looking teenage boy".

And Winslet's cause was not helped much by Ricky Gervais, who delivered a poorly-received joke at the Golden Globes ceremony when he said: "Well done, Winslet. I told you, do a Holocaust movie and the awards come, didn't I?" Gervais was referring to a 2005 episode of his BBC comedy series Extras, in which Winslet sent herself up by joking: "If you do a film about the Holocaust, you're guaranteed an Oscar," before complaining that she was bored of Holocaust dramas: "It's like, how many have there been, you know? We get it. It was grim. Move on."

Signs are that Winslet has a better chance of an Oscar with her other GG award-winning role – that of Leonardo DiCaprio’s suburban wife in Revolutionary Road, for which she won best actress on Sunday.

 ·