Jean-Jacques Annaud's film version of Marguerite Duras's evocative, beautifully imagined novel is a soft-core porno hash with pretensions to high art. Annaud focuses on
The Lover's most accessible aspects--"hot" sex scenes, the scenic pictorialism of 1930s Saigon, an overall ambiance of
flushed exotica--and wholly misses the poetry, fatalism and brilliant economy which made Duras's prose as haunting as a recurring dream.
While on a ferry crossing the Mekong River, a fifteen-year-old French girl (Jane March) encounters a wealthy young Chinese man (Tony Leung) who will forever affect her life. They begin a torrid affair which provides her impoverished famil...
Released:
1992
Rated:
R
Length:
110 mins