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Promotional poster
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud
Produced by Claude Berri
Written by Marguerite Duras (source novel)
Jean-Jacques Annaud
Gérard Brach
Narrated by Jeanne Moreau
Starring Tony Leung Ka Fai
Jane March
Music by Gabriel Yared
Cinematography Robert Fraisse
Editing by Noelle Boisson
Studio Films A2
Renn Productions
Burrill Productions
Distributed by Fox Pathé Europa (France)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (United States)
Release date(s) France:
22 January 1992
United Kingdom:
19 June 1992
United States:
30 October 1992
Running time 115 minutes
Country France
Language English
Vietnamese
Budget $30,000,000
Gross revenue $4,899,194 (United States)
The Lover, originally released in France as 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 girl's age is changed from 15½ to 18 and is portrayed by actress Jane March, who turned eighteen shortly after filming began.
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. It received mostly negative reviews from American critics.
The primary characters are known only as The Young Girl and The Chinese Man. The daughter of bitter, fearful, poverty-stricken colonials, she is a pretty waif who likes to wear an old silk dress and a man's fedora and paint her lips bright red when out of her mother's sight. She hates everything about her existence — her teachers, her fellow students, and most of all her depraved, dysfunctional family. The son of a Chinese businessman whose fortune was made in real estate, he recently has 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.
He offers her a ride to Saigon in his chauffeur-driven limousine and she accepts, although the two barely speak during the drive. The Girl gives her age at the beginning of the film as 15½, but lies to the The Chinese Man by stating that she is 17. 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 make love. Afterward she confesses she doesn't care for Chinese people, and he retaliates by telling her he couldn't marry her because she no longer is a virgin. Thus beguns a tempestuous affair both know won't last. She is scheduled to return to Paris. He is expected to engage in an arranged marriage with 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.
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