Tony Leung Ka Fai was also, quite honestly, an accurate choice to play the lovesick man. Jeanne Moreau's voice was exactly the type of voice I wanted to hear in an adaptation of L'Amant. It was quite a relief, actually, to have so much vague, fascinating content put in images, and feelings incarnated in real people. There's still so much properly left unsaid about the relationship of a 15 year old French girl and a 32 year old Chinese man. I was very skeptical because so much of Duras's sad, beautiful work is often too abstract, contradictory, ambiguous, and yet Annaud did manage to make episodes linear, comprehensible, but not trivial. I love the book and this film was very faithful to Marguerite Duras's wonderful, evocative narration. One of the most sensual film I have ever seen.Īnother great Annaud oeuvre. You can see how an erotic affair turns less and less passionate how a young girl feels of a first romance. After all these I still found The Lover one very good film and the affair between a young French girl with an older rich Asian is not only about sex but about power, pride, and the subtle relationship of identity and politics. Its dubious reputation has also contributed that the writer Marguerite Duras has repudiated the film. The wrong with this movie is that received excessive publicity for its graphic sex which is to the narrative and progression of its two characters. But also deals with interesting issues like first love ? sexual politics ? the power of sexuality which is still taboo for some people. It suffers from different styles of acting and various accents. This film which was treated by critics is worth seeing and delights. In the screenplay written by Annaud and Gérard Brach, the girl's age is changed from 15½ to 18 and is portrayed by actress Jane March, who turned eighteen shortly after, filming, began. 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. The Lover, originally released in France as L'Amant, is a 1992 drama film produced by Claude Berri and directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud.

The Lover by Marguerite Duras