The Lover (1992)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Best movie ever!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

I would love to have added 'The Lover' to my very short list of entertaining sexual adventure movies, up there with 'Emmanuel' and 'Young Lady Chatterly'. I could, if I had ever sensed that the movie was headed in that direction.When the lovers in this movie are together, their scenes are thorough enough to fit the bill of those two other titles but when the movie veers away from that it turns drab, dull and lifeless. By that reckoning, we sense that we know the real purpose behind the making of this film.Based on a book by Margaurite Duras, the movie tells the story of a French student (Jane March) in Indochina in the 1920s who falls in lust with a rich Chinese aristocrat (Tony Leung) twenty years her senior. They see each other and each knows what the other wants. Soon they are meeting regularly for a secret sexual affair.Because 'The Lover' is treated seriously I had a hard time finding a foothold. The movie is constructed as a story of two people from different worlds who are divided by racial lines at a time when crossing such lines meant grave consequences. But the movie doesn't worry about those elements very much; they seem treated at throwaways to what we they think we really came to see. The movie doesn't even have time to credit the characters with names. March and Lueng are simply listed in the credits as 'The Young Girl' and 'The Chinaman.The rest of the movie we can predict. She is bored in her life and is looking for adventure. He is rich and is headed back to an arranged marriage and a lifetime of unhappiness. The characters don't have time to deal with these issues. The movie is more interested in their affair, which is not constructed out of personality but out of the kind attraction that make up one of those glossy Playboy videos.'The Lover' was directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, a director who's work I have not come to like very much. His films are beautiful to look at but miss the human element to the machinations of the plot.This is a good-looking movie. The cinematography by Robert Fraisse is sumptuous and both leads are attractive people but I wish the movie had made up its mind. As an adventurous sex romp it might have worked. But it opts for a serious story and 'The Lover' doesn't have a brain in its pretty little head.

I first watched this movie in 1992 with my second girlfriend... I was 32 at the time and had very limited experience with women. This movie was so life changing in so many different ways for me. I have always have had playboy tendencies and the story really kind of resonated with me. Its about a Chinese trust fund type of dude who basically just hung out and partied with different women, one day he meets a young white school girl and they seem to really click. For the rest of the movie, they basically just hang out and have mostly a physical relationship. This film is one of the most erotic and well filmed movies I have ever seen! In 1992 I barely ever saw anything like this and have not since. The build up of sexual tension is something that you never see in any films. As far as the explicitness, it never really occurred to me that this film was explicit at all. Two years after I saw this film, I became single, and for the next ten years, I basically lived the lifestyle of the Chinese Playboy. In fact I seduced at least half of the women during this time period by showing the video, there were some misses, one gorgeous Russian girl who was actually a bit innocent, found it somewhat pornographic and I blew that date. But we did become good friends to this day anyways. This movie is one reason I had such a great love life during those years. It makes me wonder about the power of great movies, because my other couple of favorite movies actually kind of frames my lifestyle too. For those who don't like it much, there might just be some racism involved, seeing a non-white male, especially an Asian male in such a sexual movie must be kind of a role reversal from the usual negative stereotyping of my race. Thank you the creators of this movie, I have had a great couple of decades thanks to your movie...

I just watched this movie for the first time last week and have not been able to get it off my mind. I have watched it several times since then and have bought both the books written on this subject and also the DVD and soundtrack. I think everything about it was beautiful, from the music, the scenery, and the acting. I think the most sensual parts of the movie are when the Chinaman first sees the young girl on the ferry and is watching her from the automobile and then leaves the car and approaches her. He is supposed to be a worldly man and experienced with women but yet trembles as he offers her a cigarette. Another sensual scene is in the car driving to Saigon and he moves his hand close to hers and begins touching her fingers and then she clasps his with her thumb and then they are clutching hands. Also he watches her all through this movie, on the ferry, while they are driving, while they walk together, in the restaurant and then while she is dancing with her brother, you can see the jealousy. He is a gentleman and a gentle man. He offers her his coat when she is chilly and really does love her. I think those scenes are more sexual than the sex scenes. I think her leaning on the ferry in the beginning of the film with her hat on and her dress blowing in the breeze and her leg on the railing shows how sexy this young girl can be. There is something about that scene and the same stance at the end of the movie that is sexy and the Chinaman saw that. I do think she loved him and knew that nothing could come of it so she was not going to say she loved him or cared for him. I think she was acting tough because she didn't want him to think she cared for him. I almost think she was the seducer. That she was ready for an adult encounter and he was the one that showed up. Why wouldn't anyone want him. That shot of him as he departs from the car and then turns around was something else. He is so handsome. I wanted to know where I could go to get one of him. Yes she is ready for a sexual adventure and she goes for it. I felt very sad that the two of them could not spend the rest of their lives together. When he tells her at her mothers old plantation that he spoke to the father and tried to tell him that a love like theirs only comes once in your life was so touching and then says the father would rather see his son dead than with a white women and she remarks back that she will be leaving anyway and that she doesn't love him. I thought she was mean to say that but then she was mean in a few scenes. I thought he had more class than she did and manners as well. I cried at the end, I guess because the love had no place to go once she left. He was left with nothing and she was moving on to whatever. Then she realized that she did love him. After reading so many articles on the book and the author it seems that the Chinaman was the great love of her life. That the relationships she had did not work out all that well and he of course left her know that he had always loved her. This relationship that they had lasted for a year and a half according to the book. In that much time you can become very attached to someone. If there really wasn't anything there on her part as far as love or caring I don't think she would have stayed with him that long. She was young she would have moved on. This is definitely the all time favorite movie for me. I am haunted by it and cannot stop thinking about it. Jane March did a great job as an unexperienced in the love department young girl. Tony Leung Ka Fai, uhmmmm let me say this, wow what a handsome guy who makes the screen sizzle when he is on it. Those shots of him in the beginning and at the dance and his wedding all I can say he is something. His dress is impeccable in this movie. He really looks like a rich aristocrat and behaves as one as well. Loved the movie and will never forget it.

The beauty of this film and its heartbreaking romance lie in the unspoken, between the acrid disavowals of love, in the bitter context of colonial racial, socio-economic, and gender relations. Tony Leung and Jane March superbly portray the tensions existing within the multiple layers of colonial relations - the emasculation of the Chinaman vis a vis the privilege of the girl's whiteness playing out along with the shame and barbarity of the girl's poverty vis a vis the civility and access of his Chinese (not even native) affluence. Ultimately, the schism wrought by the sociocultural constraints of their disparate backgrounds is what tears them asunder or rather dooms their romance from the beginning.What Annaud does brilliantly is to portray the lovers' yearning without giving voice to it overtly. He depicts it through a series of disavowals, through the wounds they inflict on each other, and allows the viewer to fill in that which cannot be uttered.As for the graphic portrayals of sex, I am usually the first to decry graphic sex scenes. However, in this film, the sex scenes again plays out the dynamics of the characters as a part of the larger colonial relations. The tenderness of this film and of its romance lie within the beautifully cinematographed sex scenes as well as in the violence and poignancy that exists throughout rest of the film.