Evengyny
Thanks for the memories!
Pacionsbo
Absolutely Fantastic
Kinley
This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
elianne basset
This film is my favorite. It shows how a Chinese man in his thirties falls in love with a 15-year-old girl. Although she is not conscious of the love she feels for him because of the social pressure she has to face, young Marguerite Duras (the film is based on her autobiography)completely abandons herself to the man and discovers true love. To me, the way the film was shot is quite poetic, even artistic. Far from conventions, The Lover is an immersion in colonial Asia. You can smell,ear,taste and touch what the characters are experiencing: something unique that even time can't erase.
Sam Sloan
The story is told to us through the sullen and hauntingly beautiful voice of Jeanne Mareau from the pages of novelist Margureite Duras' own book. The movie begins as we follow a young and beautiful French high school girl in 1929 French colonial Viet Nam when she begins her journey on an uncomfortably packed native bus to begin her school year in Saigon. It is on a small ferry carrying her and her bus across the Mekong River where we see her now standing along the side of the ferry staring out with her right foot casually resting on the ferry's bottom rung of a rope safety cordon. But also on this same ferry, watching her is a rich, handsome and well dressed Chinaman sitting in his chauffeur driven car, a car that must be one of the most luxurious cars of its day. He leaves the comfort of his automobile to join this very young girl and nervously and awkwardly attempts to make conversation with her. She seems disinterested in him and says little to him in reply, but pressing forward anyway, he then offers her a ride to the city. We now watch them riding together as the car drives along the dusty dirt road to Saigon with the only sounds we hear are those of the chauffeur honking the horn through the Vietnamese countryside passing rubber plantations and rice fields, weaving and dodging people and animals on the way to their destination in Saigon. He notices now her small hand resting on the seat between them and we see him now attempt to go beyond small conversation to make his first physical contact with her. He brushes against the side of her hand with his own and she doesn't draw her hand away from his but instead seems to relish his touch as we watch their two hands now become one, his hand over hers, their fingers eagerly and tightly interlocking in sexual intensity and energy.The Chinaman wastes little time in Saigon before taking her in his car from a break in school to a seedy part of Saigon in the Chinese district of Cholon. We watch them walk the last of the way through Cholon which she describes Cholon vividly as "smelling of Jasmine, minced meats, charcoal and soup, busy with the commotion of the mid day meal." In that room what follows is probably some of the most erotic scenes ever to be shown in a movie such as this and we almost aren't prepared for it, It isn't just what we see happening between them that holds our interest, but that room itself with sunlight piercing through the narrow slats of the room's window shutters, casting enough light on old used furniture, that bed and the writhing bodies of the lovers lying upon it to creating an unforgettable almost surreal dream-like state. We hear a cacophony of sounds just outside those walls produced by a motley variety of people, shoppers, vendors of every sort from stalls and along the street, diners, street peddlers calling out, a child (probably) practicing lessons on a piano and animals of every sort too. Together these sounds merge and drone on like that of locusts, somehow adding to the intensity of the sexual pleasures being engaged within the privacy of that room as if an island refuge from it all. This relationship as we expect is eventually doomed for various and obvious reasons and the time comes when they must part. Their parting and last sight of each other is poignant and from afar as we see Duras standing aboard the French liner, the Alexander Dumas as it begins leaving Saigon harbor. She is standing in the same manner she did the same day they first met aboard the small ferry, her left foot resting casually yet purposely on a bottom rope of the ship's safety cordon, as if a signal, looking intently outward for him where ever he may be on that dock yard. Finally, she sees his car, parked beside an old warehouse and almost hidden behind a pallet of unloaded piled high cargo with him watching her from the same seat in that same car where they had once sat together. They stare out at each other until they can see each other no more. She is not to hear of her Chinese lover again for many years later as we see her now an old woman at the movie's end sitting alone working at her desk in a dingy office in Paris with snow falling in the gloom of early evening outside her window. Her phone rings and he tells her in a voice that has lost his Westerness, regaining the dialect of his native China, she explains, that he loves her now as much as he loved her then and will always love her until the day he dies. Her emotion touches us as we ask why did it have to end? And as we ask that question, we are reminded of the impossible set of circumstances of race and age that by the standards of that day and this doomed any future for them. But still . . .This is a great movie, made all the better by Jane March and Tony Leung. March most ably portrays the innocent child school girl with the sexual awakening of the eager young vixen that lies beneath and erupts to the surface. March was made for the role and it is hard to imagine anyone else who could have played it any better. And Tony Leung had his role down just perfectly as well, bringing out the inner torment of the man he plays, evoking our sense of empathy for him in spite of the line he crosses in what many would call the sexual exploitation of a minor. I never tire of this movie and I watch it again and again and again. I know I am not alone.
Derek Lee
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...
jaeminuf
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.
