Taglines: She gave her innocence, her passion, her body. The one thing she couldn’t give was her love.
L’Amante
The Lover movie storyline. It is French Colonial Vietnam in 1929. A young French girl from a family that is having some monetary difficulties is returning to boarding school. She is alone on public transportation when she catches the eye of a wealthy Chinese businessman. He offers her a ride into town in the back of his chauffeured sedan, and sparks fly. Can the torrid affair that ensues between them overcome the class restrictions and social mores of that time? Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Marguerite Duras.
The Lover (French: L’Amant) is a 1992 drama film produced by Claude Berri and directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. Based on the semi-autobiographical 1984 novel by Marguerite Duras, the film details the illicit affair between a teenage French girl and a wealthy Chinese man in 1929 French Indochina. In the screenplay written by Annaud and Gérard Brach, the 15 1/2-year-old protagonist is portrayed by actress Jane March, who turned eighteen shortly after filming began. Her lover is portrayed by actor Tony Leung Ka-fai. The film features full-frontal male and female nudity.
Production began in 1989, with filming commencing in 1991. The film made its theatrical debut on 22 January 1992, with an English release in the United Kingdom in June and in the United States in October of the same year. The film won the Motion Picture Sound Editors’s 1993 Golden Reel award for “Best Sound Editing — Foreign Feature” and the 1993 César Award for Best Music Written for a Film. The film was a box office success, and received fairly positive reviews from the general audience along with mostly negative reviews from American critics. Overall, the film’s performances and cinematography were generally praised.
About the Story
The primary characters are known only as the Young Girl and the Chinese Man. The daughter of bitter, fearful, poverty-stricken colonials, the girl is a pretty waif who wears an old silk dress and a fedora, and paints her lips bright red when out of her mother’s sight. She and her family are French, but live in Vietnam where her mother is a schoolteacher to local children. Her weak-willed mother, violent older brother, and timid younger brother live in a rural section across the river. The girl is a loner but an excellent student, who dreams of being a writer.
The girl meets the Chinese man when crossing the river on the ferry to return to the city after a school holiday. He is the son of a businessman whose fortune was made in real estate, and has recently returned from Paris after dropping out of school. He has the look but lacks the self-assurance of the playboy he fancies himself to be, and he is mesmerized the first time he sees her standing by the rail on a crowded ferry crossing the Mekong River.
After some awkward conversation, he offers her a ride to Saigon in his chauffeur-driven limousine and she accepts, although the two barely speak during the drive. In voice-over at the beginning of the film she originally gives her age as 15, but tells the man she is 17. He, as well, appears to exaggerate when he states he is 32, considering the usual age of the recent graduate at the time. The following day, he waits for her outside her boarding school, and the two go to the room he rents for entertaining mistresses in the seedy Chinese quarter, where they have sex.
They realize that “a future together is unthinkable” because she is scheduled to return to Paris soon, and he is arranged to marry a Chinese heiress. Aware of the limited time they have together, they fall into a relationship in which they shed all responsibilities that come with commitment. Every day after school, the girl goes to the rented room somewhat ambiguously acting out her pretend fantasy of the life of a fashionable courtesan.
The Lover – L’Amante movie trailer.
The Lover – L’Amante (1992)
Directed by: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Starring: Jane March, Tony Ka Fai Leung, Frédérique Meininger, Arnaud Giovaninetti, Melvil Poupaud, Lisa Faulkner, Xiem Mang, Philippe Le Dem, Ann Schaufuss, Tania Torrens
Screenplay by: Jean-Jacques Annaud, Gérard Brach
Production Design by: Hoang Thanh At
Cinematography by: Robert Fraisse
Film Editing by: Noëlle Boisson
Costume Design by: Yvonne Sassinot de Nesle
Art Direction by: Olivier Radot
Music by: Gabriel Yared
MPAA Rating: R on appeal for graphic and explicit sexuality.
Distributed by: Fox Pathé Europa (France)
Release Date: January 22, 1992 (France), June 19, 1992 (United Kingdom), October 31, 1992 (United States)
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