The Lover
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Movie Reviews of The Lover
Movie Review: Raw, sensual, beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm in a state of awe after seeing "The Lover," or "L'Amant," the film based on the autobiographical novel by Marguerite Duras. Duras wrote this confessional piece about a love affair she had while still a teenager with a much older Chinese man. It is set in 1920's Vietnam, a period of time where Vietnam was awash with the mingling of its colonizers: the French and Chinese. Although the story conveys an illegal relationship by today's standards (she was a minor), I'll just respect Duras' story since it is her life, after all, and refrain from condemning it as a film that condones statutory rape. So, with that out of the way, I'll proceed.
First off, the premise of the story is unique. Neither she or he are natives of Vietnam; however, this is where their relationship thrives. It is outside of Vietnam, or out of its social context, such as in her private family quarrels and his remembered experience with whites in France, that their relationship withers. Duras touches upon so many different divides: race, social hierarchy, economic disparity, age gap....It makes for an interesting story with many immobile elements. The movie is hauntingly beautiful and the actors are splendid. Jane March's final scene--during which she weeps for her lost love set to the background of a Chopin waltz--made my whole body ache with sadness. Tony Leung does a fine job of portraying the millionaire Chinese man who lives off of his family's extraordinary wealth and has no other passion than that of seeking and making love. His ample idle time, since he had never worked a day in his life, affords him the opportunity to woo this young French school girl. The movie is extremely sexually graphic, to the point that I had to fast-forward through those scenes, but I am told that Duras' novel itself was also quite graphic. Anyways, the two of them end up "falling in love" and find themselves bitterly destroyed by their impractical relationship. He has an arranged marriage to a stranger; her (albeit white-trash) family would never tolerate her being with a "Chinaman."
I love this movie for its honest illustration of impossible love. Annaud, the director, holds this film steady in its subtlety throughout, giving the viewer the option of deciding for oneself what their love really means. The characters are consumed by a romantic ideal that they are projecting on one another--which just fuels their relationship--and find wholeness, ironically, in an empty fantasy. She believes that he is too good for her, as the daughter of a family with a destroyed reputation; and he feels undeserving of her, since while he studied in Paris, the only white women he shared a bed with were French prostitutes. I think that, due to such insecurities and their volatile physical attraction, it seems only logical that they would fall for each other, or the "idea" of the other. When they are together, they fill one another's voids, and come to associate their wonderful world as distinct and far more perfect than the harsh reality outside of his "bachelor's room." She deals with an abusive brother, witless mother, and extreme poverty, while he finds himself of no other use than to love, and realizes that he will never gain access to the Western world of which he is so fond. Together, however, they venture into an existence of peace, validation, security--suspending reality even for a couple of hours at a time. They create a womb for each other in that dim-lit room of his, while the rest of the world bustles around in the Chinese district right outside the door. Rickshaws squeak on by, street vendors hawk their wares, people struggle to make a living, while the two lovers hold onto their fantasy for just a moment longer.
I don't really know how it would have turned out had Duras actually married this man. In a way, I'm glad that she didn't. They are creatures of different habitats and I doubt that their passion for one another would have carried them through decades of marriage and reality: think babies, diapers, child-sitting, who makes dinner, laundry, cleaning the toilet? [Come on, you've got to think about these things. I've come to ask myself anytime I meet a guy I'm remotely interested in: "Can I imagine grocery shopping with him? How about going to the dollar store?" "Will he share household duties, such as cleaning mildew off of shower walls?" "What if I get really sick and throw up all over the place?" Anyways, I digress. Back to the movie.] Even more, the beautiful Romeo and Juliet quality would be entirely lost if they had learned more about one another and come to realize that they were never in love with the person. Perhaps I am cynical, but I doubt that relationships based on initial attraction are sustainable. They are too far removed from reality and will forever be relegated to that of near-fiction, as in the case of the very real Marguerite Duras and her Chinese lover. In the end, I believe "The Lover" is a compelling study of how people fulfill their need for emotional survival. It is also a testament to how blind we are to our own deficiencies. Watch it. Watch it, not only for their story, but for the gorgeous imagery and lyrical direction.
Movie Review: Lovers and other strangers
Summary: 5 Stars
Jean-Jacques Annaud (Two Brothers, Enemy at the Gate) made L'Amant (The Lover) in 1992. He wrote the script, but the story is from an autobiographical novel by Marguerite Duras. Anyone who has heard the narrator from Hiroshima Mon Amour, the film Duras scripted for Alain Resnais, will know what to expect from the book, and from the film as well, for Annaud is faithful to it. Duras writes some of the most beautiful, most precise prose of any modern writer, and preserves a tone of ironic detachment that draws the reader deep into the emotional process she is describing.
Annaud takes a risk in following the book so closely, for his film becomes literary rather than cinematic, and viewers sometimes find it empty, lacking in the kind of melodramatic intensity we've become used to in movies. In a reference to Hiroshima Mon Amour perhaps, Annaud has two parallel narrative streams throughout the movie, and this device succeeds in making it a great movie.
Viewers, especially in puritan America, are taken aback at the intensely erotic lovemaking scenes, which comprise most of the visual content of the movie. The lovmaking is so real that one wonders if the actors were really doing it, and not acting at all (I think they were). Other components may be dwarfed by this content, but they are there: the magnificent photography of landscape and city which expresses the love the characters have for their home; the racial divide between Asian and European; and the overriding theme of growing up.
The second narrative stream is the reflections of the elderly Duras (spoken by Jeanne Moreau in a non acting but important role) as she comments on the actions of her younger self as they are depicted in the film. This is the essence of both book and film. The tender, nostalgic tone of the elder Duras discovers both innocence and ignorance in the younger one; this is an experience everyone (except the very young) can relate to. The grandiose, empty generalisations (all women are prostitutes, the young girl tells her friend: I wouldn't mind being one). The eagerness for sexual experience, for losing one's virginity and becoming 'adult'. Focusing on one's own overwhelming reactions and cultivating a kind of blindness to the reactions of others. It is by looking back that Duras discovers the depth of the passion she has inspired in her lover. It is by looking back that she also discovers her feelings, on the surface so self confidently detached, were deeper than she realised. The lover loved her all his life. L'Amant is a love letter both to him, the lover, and her younger self, an attempt to bring the love more perfectly to life in fiction than it was in real life, an appeal to all of us to understand more fully what we are feeling, even though Duras realises the ironic truth that to learn from our mistakes we first have to make them.
Postscript
I recently read a review of this film in which the reviewer said the film was weakened by the fact that Jane March couldn't act. The comment made me reflect on how often actresses who do nude scenes are said to be bad actresses. It's always sounded like puritanism to me: instead of saying it's bad to be naked you say the acting's bad. I thought the acting was good throughout this film. You cannot fault Tony Leung, one of the greats of the HK movie industry. Jane March was asked to play a young, inexperienced girl and her own acting inexperience helped her do a good job. She played a stranger in a strange land who was also a stranger in her own family slowly coming to self realisation through her own sensuality. March was believable through all this, and not only because she looked the part. But to get the most from the movie you can't just focus on Jane March, just as you can't just focus on Jeanne Moreau as she speaks Duras' words. You have to focus on both actresses at the same time. And if you do and you're a male you'll learn a lot about women.
Movie Review: L'amant simplement
Summary: 5 Stars
Most people miss the boat in viewing "The Lover." It is a semi-autobiographical novel based purely on memory of a young girl's first sexual awakening - so do not expect an effective visual translation of written words without some visual graphic description - especially when the primary focus of the novel is nuanced on physical love, in the setting of colonial oppression (France - Vietnam), social stratification (wealthy ethnic-Chinese enclave in Vietnam - poor French nationals living in colonial outposts), racial separation (native Asians - colonial Whites), then later, the realization of right-and-wrong (the mother apologizing to Tony Leung about her children's bad behaviour), and finally higher emotional love (Jane March's heart-broken scene on the ocean liner). In addition, this movie was told from an impoverished, uneducated, inexperienced, naïve, but yet elitist colonial French girl's point-of-view, in the 1920's Vietnam. (Also remember that the younger Marguerite Duras was actually more Vietnamese than French.). So...to call this movie a kiddie-porn / soft-porn in disguise is unfair - it IS about sex between a fifteen-year-old girl and a thirty-two-year-old man, no pretense here. To criticize a certain scene as "disguised rape" is unfair - it WAS rape, a perfect cinematic description sexual aggression, control, and power. Things must be kept in context of the time and place. If one were to criticize every aspect of this film, then let's not make a film about colonialism, inequality of race or wealth, or any other wrong doing in the world.
And finally, how the French look at love and sex is different from many other cultures. This movie is based on a French novel (one of many versions on the same theme by Marguerite Duras), as such, there is an expectation that the audience should know the plot already, and the movie should be treated as a visual extension - or one could say, a "validation"- of their imagery when reading the novel (How would anyone know what Colonial Vietnam looked like without moving visual images on screen?).
I agree that the sex scenes border on soft-porn (one cannot make a successful intellectual movie nowadays without it being filmed in English, as well as some artful sex-scene thrown in); however, it was cleverly done. And it is true that if these scenes were to be deleted from the movie, the rest would not make sense - because the novel was based on those bedroom scenes that subsequently shaped and formed Marguerite Duras's life. I recommend, if you speak French, to watch the movie in the French soundtrack. It provides a more authentic feel to the period (of course, the actors' mouths would not match the sound...but for Europeans, it is not of great detriments, as they are used to multi-culture casting.)
Movie Review: The Lover - A Passionate Love Story
Summary: 5 Stars
For those who think this movie is only carnal, I extend my deepest sympathies for your apparent ignorance. This is a romeo and juliet parallel not to be missed.This is one of, if not the best, love story ever written. It tells of a young woman, barely 17, whose life is already a tragedy. Her family was thrown from wealth and good standing, to poverty and squalor, scraping by to make ends meet in French occupied Vietnam. She is all but shakespearean in her suffering, without the guidance of a father, and the love of a weak and unscrupulous mother and drug addicted brother. There is much tenderness in the cannonization of the youngest brother, as a living saint, the one pure thing in her life.
The lover, played by Tony Leung Kai Fai, is himself, a tragic hero. Educated in France, he longs to shirk the burden of his chinese culture, buck tradition and marry for love. He is consumed by the forced arranged marriage, and pursues the young Jane March with the guile of an experienced and wealthy man, but with the tenderness and respect of a true lover.
The two make an arrangement to meet in his bachelor pad, which according to chinese tradition, is a "practice area" for marriage. Jane March's young virgin surrenders to passion and experience, while remaining emotionally detatched from her chinese lover, for he tells her that they can "never be married" as it is "not allowed", and he would be disowned and poverty stricken if he went against the wishes of his family. Seemingly, Jane March's character cares little for the potential of this toxic relationship, revelling only in the sexual experience and conversation that they share in their secret room, away from the rest of the world. He is her escape, as surreal as the life she escapes from.
The scenes are intimate and touching, full of tenderness and imagery that conveys the worship like reverence with which they experience each other. He, worshiping her sexual innocence, while she worships his sexual experience. A powerful and erotic culmination.
Truly as story continues, you believe each of the characters less and less, as they joke about how they would not fit in to each others world. They do a wonderful job trying to convince each other that the affair means nothing. It becomes less believable, as you see them fall deeper and deeper into love, and examples of arguments where they truly hurt each other, in the way that only two people in love can wound.
A truly touching ending that had me in tears, as her ship pulls away from the harbour and he is there, in his car, watching her leave.
Highly recommend this movie as a measure to restore your faith in the very real power and strength of love, even when there is no "story book" ending.(...)
Movie Review: very deeply moving and heart-wrenching..
Summary: 5 Stars
I had never heard of this movie, in fact never knew it existed until just recently..
however, I can only state how deeply it affected me..it was so very profound..
It was so beautifully and wonderfully photographed as others have stated.. the very intimate sex/love scenes tastefully done..
however, after reading the numerous reviews am wondering if some of the reviewers saw the same scenes that I did ?...
In question was the so called 'rape' scene..
well let me refresh your memories [for the ones who seemed to be 'missing' this]...
that scene happened shortly after the Chinese man [her lover] witnessed the very suggestive scene when the brother and his sister were dancing together.. oh so very close and almost erotic !! this scene implied something very indecent like incense.. and the look on his face told it all..everything was there.. every emotion showing on his face...
disbelief at first, a deep hurt when he realised what was actually happening between them.. then the feelings of betrayal and then anger..
This manifested itself later in the batchelors quarters when he angrily slapped her face and then proceeded to quietly but brutishly take her..
I did not view this as rape,it was understood.. he felt betrayed, angry and shame at what had happened.. her family [the white trash] had just treated him so shamefully too...but it was the scene that he had just witnessed as she danced ever so closely and suggestively with her brother that made him so angry.. she understood.. she made no moves to stop him, she did not shout out and neither did she participate in the act ! ...
Also I noted how deeply he must have cared for her when he gave her his beautiful very expensive ring that must have meant so much to him.. the ring which had belonged to his deceased mother..
so much poignancy on his face when he pulled the ring from his finger...
The ending too was so superb, I felt so deeply moved and sad to think that finally after she realised how much she did care for him it was too late.. it had always been too late...
what a fabulous,heart-wrenching, moving story..