The_Film_Cricket 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.

Michael Neumann In Jean-Jacques Annaud's flaccid soft-porn melodrama a young French girl is sexually awakened by a polite but torrid affair with a Chinese gentleman in colonial Southeast Asia. The film was adapted from the autobiographical novel by Marguerite Duras, but is actually a dimwitted cousin to 'Last Tango In Paris', with all the pretensions but none of the power of Bertolucci's film (the anonymous characters are identified only as 'the girl', 'the Chinese man', and so forth). The eroticism so vital to the story is further undermined by a script that might have been improved by subtitles (but not by much), and fatally crippled by two leads with little chemistry and even less depth. There's nothing about the vague, passive schoolgirl played by Jean March to suggest she could ever write like Duras, so it's hard to connect the often exquisite voice-over narration (read by Jeanne Moreau) with the empty sentiments coming out her mouth. Desperate publicists tried to drum up prurient interest by circulating rumors that the sex was genuine, but it's a moot point: the love scenes are no more provocative than a gymnastics exhibition, minus the dexterity and grace.

thedoctoroctopus The first time I heard about The Lover I was in high school and it was one of those films that a few classmates of mine would always bring up as the "dirtiest" movie they had ever seen. When I caught the unrated version of the film when it premiered back on Cinemax in 1993. I had no idea what I was in store for. I had already seen films that intensely explored sexual relationships in graphic detail, but most relegated the central issue, sex, to the background. They were more concerned with showing the emotional consequences of unrestrained passion, and not showing the obsession as it's played out in the bedroom. What makes The Lover so unique is that it's a movie which is not afraid to show us exactly what its lovers do when they're together. It shows us in explicit detail, repeatedly. The movie has incredible acting, direction, production design, which I will get to in a second. But the main reason to see this film is Jane March. Throughout this movie Jane is showing us her beautiful figure and openly sharing with us her sexual uninhibitedness. Her scenes with Tony absolutely melt the screen with eroticism. She was 17 years old during film, and you can see that her tremendous teenager body was still in course of formation. Jane is almost constantly naked throughout the middle of this film, and see her young body from practically every angle there is. We get great looks at her body during sex, when she's being washed, when she's walking around, and even when she's just lying there. But even when she is not seen disrobing, March is unbelievably sexy. The scene in which she puts her lips on the window of a man who is visiting her at school are some of the most erotically charged scenes in cinema history.The story focuses on "the young girl", whose life is already a tragedy at only the age of 15. Her family was once wealthy and respected, but they lost it all. They find themselves living in French occupied Vietnam. There is no love loss between the young girl and her mother--a truly cold woman with no sense of right or wrong. One of her brothers is addicted to drugs, and treats her with nothing but contempt. Her only shining light of hope is her younger brother. The lover is himself a tragic figure. Educated in France, he despises much of traditional Chinese culture, and is desperate to leave tradition behind and marry for love. He is severely depressed, and becomes infatuated by the sight of a young European girl he spots on a ferry. He decides right then to pursue the young girl as a way to escape his increasingly sad state of mind. After accepting a ride in his car, the two find themselves tightly holding hands. After dropping her off at the boarding school she attends, he becomes obsessed with seeing her again. The two eventually make an arrangement to meet in his bachelor pad, which according to Chinese tradition, is a "practice area" for marriage. The very intense relationship progresses as each plays with each other's bodies, lives and feelings. He says that he is in a prearranged marriage and cannot marry her, but he seems totally taken with her. She says that sex is totally fine with her, but could she be denying that it is love that she feels? With both families aware and opposed to their meeting, the young girl and the lover continue on exploring each other. It is only at the end that the true feelings are revealed.What director 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. Annaud spent over a year in Vietnam scouting for the most beautiful locations and remain of French colonial empire. The music is rich, the costumes are beautiful, and photography captures the sultry atmosphere of Indochina. The director took a long time finding a young actress who could easily pass for a girl in her mid teens. He finally the incredibly youthful looking Jane March. Although she plays a 15 year old here, the makeup and lighting make her appear even younger.No review of The Lover is complete without mentioning its pervasive sexuality. There is a bit of a controversy over the possibility of Jane March losing her virginity during her scenes with Tony Leung. There seems to be so much speculation - and different accounts, so its hard to know the truth I guess. You'll notice her facial expressions in the "deflowering" scene seem to be authentic, as they show her grimacing one second and smiling the next. Did they have actual sex? Opinions vary. I believe they did, and the actors just lied about it after wards. Take the third love scene as an example. The fact that Leung and March scoot across the floor like that while in the throes of passion makes it seem very likely that they were actually having sex. The fourth love scene, which has March sitting on top of Leung clearly shows a penetration shot. One cannot fake that.In the end, The Lover is a compelling story of how people fulfill the need for emotional survival. It is a testament to how blind we are to our own deficiencies. The ending is one of the most haunting scenes in film history. It's impossible not to feel for the young girl as she thinks about what her relationship with her lover could have been. Check this one out.

Charles_LePoje This exquisitely rendered film adaptation of Margaret Duras' international best-seller weaves a bittersweet story about the most unlikely love affair.An extraordinary love story unfolds in Saigon, in French colonial Vietnam, in the late twenties. The two protagonists whose budding liaison we follow throughout this melancholic French film are polar opposites. Cultural prejudice, the age disparity, class difference, racial divide, dysfunctional family, a pre-arranged marriage, a young girl in a man's fedora, all stand in the way of the most of elusive of humane pursuits - love. This is a love affair par excellence, about love of a very special sort; the only kind of love that is forever etched in the lovebirds hearts - the love that leaves both lovers broken-hearted.Veteran filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud (Quest For Fire, In The Name Of The Rose, The Bear) gives the stellar screen adaptation of the book - by his frequent collaborator, screen writer Gerard Brach - a de luxe treatment. He seamlessly translates the superb screen play to the silver screen in the most effective fashion; much like celebrated rendering of Mario Puzzo's 'Godfather' by another cinematic master - Francis Ford Copolla. Both directors have miraculously elevated source materials, pop culture international literary phenomenons, into cinema classics. This memorable feature is a crowning achievement in the career of an acclaimed artist with imposing international stature.That this flawless cinematic gem has not gotten prominence it deserves on our shores, is a lamentable testament to our puritanical society and the crudeness of populist taste. Irrespectful of high cinematic achievements the two sub-genres will always encounter sharp scissors of our merciless and hypocritical moral and cultural guardians. Our censors will inevitable relish at any 'sexually explicit', controversial love story that is left of mainstream (coffee-table pornography, in our righteous film critic's parlance) and, for different reasons altogether, at a serious, probing, insightful and provocative political picture. These are exactly the two film arenas in which foreign filmmakers are in a league way above the common and the mediocre, the two American leagues tackling the respective sub-genres.There is a seduction scene at the beginning of this luminous picture that is as sophisticated and erotic as anything written by Stendhal; right from a classical French novel. This extremely rich, masterfully shot, explosively potent scene brimming with subtle eroticism, is the meeting, in the back seat of a car, of suppressed mature desire and the sweet dread of carnal awakening of a nymphet.There are numerous scenes of striking beauty, poetically realized, throughout the movie, but one stands out. When the young girl, her sexuality fully awakened, approaches her lover's car and purses her lips on the window.The precise, top-notch editing serves the picture well, always adding to the story's narrative drive or allowing for a moment of contemplation. The most exciting scenes end at just the right moments, when the viewers anticipation is at its highest. They are always followed by a lingering or tracking shot of magnificent, lyrical beauty.Seldom is a close-up as eloquent as it is in the hands of Robert Fraisse, the film's Oscar nominated cinematographer (he had a misfortune of running against Robert Redford's 'A River Runs Through It). We learn more about the character of The Young Girl from a single protracted close-up of the girl, than we learn about characters in many other movies during the whole first act. By the time his camera reaches her old cabaret shoes, slowly lingering down her pigtail, pausing on a ribbon, the essence of her innocent persona is half-revealed. The whole film is spectacularly shot; a picturesque collage of never-ending, breath-taking images, elegantly composed and framed with a finesse full of visual majesty.The film main conflict surprisingly stems from the young girl's a priori approach to the blossoming relationship. Her determination to keep the affair strictly sexual could have come out contrived were it not for the grim circumstances of her family life that had her mature before her time. Not inherent to her age group, the determination was way ahead of her times. It would take decades for such attitude to approach mainstream with female liberation movement which emerged in the late sixties.On the opposite end, her rich Chinese lover is bound to marry according to his father's wishes and to the tradition of arranged marriages. Born into riches, with no profession nor any discernible talents, in his own words he is nobody without his money. Seemingly a perfect set-up for a guilty-free sexual liaison gets complicated when the Chinese bon vivant falls in love with the young girl and meets the torments of unrequited love.'The Lover' is a cinematic gem of rare color and unforgettable spark; the love story of singular beauty and distinct resonance.