The Lover (1992) (Avant Garde Cinema)

Simply Stunning & Sexy. A Masterpiece O

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Jun 28, 2003 | 3 out of 3 found this The Lover (1992) review helpful

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"L'Amant" or simply, "The Lover" is visually stunning and a sexy masterpiece of cinematic art. Truly a masterpiece of story-telling!!The movie is simply stimulating, sensitive, stunning, s...exy, erotic, alarming, captivating, passionate, engrossing, musical, zesty, reflective, cinematic, haunting and a very tragic love story. A love story that is based on the semi-autobiography of one of the most celebrated French author, Marguerite Duras who passed away in 1996.I certainly disagree with several critics who did not hesitate to label the motion picture as "shallow" and "nothing more than a soft-porn." This is obvious to me that the critics are ignorant or "illiterate" to the story behind the story and the message both the author and the film director are trying to convey.Just because this movie contains scenes that are erotic with nudity, it does not mean that the film is pornographic. That is shallow thinking and definitely reflective of someone who is ignorant and lack of literary sense. Moreover these illiterate critics are oblivious to the historical background of life in French-ruled Vietnam and the general French predisposition towards the Vietnamese and the Chinese in the 1920s and 1930s.To paraphrase another fan of this movie, who reasoned that if this movie is a porn, it would not hassle over the cinematographic details, art direction and casting. I would add: it would not has been nominated for an Oscar and won an award from the mainstream French Cinema. It would be totally ignored by them.One of my favourite erotic scenes in the movie is when the girl gradually and teasingly, pursed her lips on the glass window of the limousine for her lover. Another favourite of mine is: the scene in the limo, showing Jane and Tony slowly and hesitatingly held hands together and avoided glancing at each other.The camera works that captured these two visually stunning moments are extremely well done. These two scenes are so erotic, my heart nearly skips a beat. To do justice to this movie, one really needs to watch it, to believe what I have just described here.The Story:This is a movie about a teenage girl who was physically and emotionally abused by her mother and elder brother. She felt unable to control her predicament.She sought solace and control through her passionate affair with a wealthy Chinese man (actor Tony Leung) from Cholon. However, the affair is tragic from the very beginning because of the cross-cultural conflicts experienced and endured by the two lovebirds.There is on one hand, the French social restrictions about relationships with the "inferior" race of Vietnamese and the Chinese. On the other hand, it was about the Chinese tradition of arranged marriages.The inevitable question is: Did she eventually love him?Here are the words of Duras:"Among all the other nights upon nights, the girl had spent that one on the boat....when it happened, the burst of Chopin.... There wasn't a breath of wind and the music spread all over the dark boat, like a heavenly injunction whose import was unknown, like an order from God whose meaning was inscrutable. And the girl started up as if to go and kill herself in her turn, throw herself in her turn into the sea, and afterwards, she wept because she thought of the man from Cholon and suddenly she wasn't sure she hadn't loved him with a love she hadn't seen because it had lost itself in the affair like water in (the) sand and she rediscovered it only now, through this moment of music......"By the way, the Chopin music did played in the movie. Read more Less