THE LOVER

'''The Lover''' (French title: '''L'Amant''') is an autobiographical novel by Marguerite Duras, published in 1984 by Les Éditions de Minuit. It has been translated to 43 languages. It was awarded the 1984 Prix Goncourt.
''The Lover'' is also a 1992 movie based on this novel, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and starring Jane March and Tony Leung Ka Fai. The cast also included Lisa Faulkner. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. A radio dramatisation, starring Diana Quick and Olivia Hallinan, which was rather more faithful to Duras's novel than the film, was broadcast in September 2007.

Contents

Plot summary

Production

Real-life connections

External links

Plot summary

This summary is for the 1992 film.
Set against the backdrop of French colonial Vietnam, ''The Lover'' reveals the intimacies and intricacies of a clandestine romance between a pubescent girl (Jane March), from a financially strapped French family and an older, wealthy Chinese man (Tony Leung Ka-Fai). The story is narrated by Jeanne Moreau, portraying a writer looking back on her youth.
In 1929, a 15 year old nameless girl is traveling by ferry across the Mekong Delta, returning from a holiday at her family home in the village of Sadec, to her boarding school in Saigon. She attracts the attention of a 32 year old son of a Chinese business magnate, a young man of wealth and heir to a fortune. He strikes up a conversation with the girl; she accepts a ride back to town in his chauffeured limousine.
Compelled by the circumstances of her upbringing, this girl, the daughter of a bankrupt, manic-depressive widow, is newly awakened to the impending and all-too-real task of making her way alone in the world. Thus, she becomes his lover, until he bows to the disapproval of his father and breaks off the affair.
For her lover, there is no question of the depth and sincerity of his love, but it isn't until much later that the girl acknowledges to herself her true feelings.

Production

The film is noted for several sexually explicit scenes. (March had five body doubles, while Leung had two.) It has also been alleged that the sex scene in the film was unsimulated. This was not immediately denied by the filmmakers for publicity reasons.
When the film opened, it gained notoriety for its portrayal of an under-aged protagonist. Jane March was 18 at the time the film was made.

Real-life connections

Duras' real-life Chinese lover was named Lee. The last she heard of him, he became a born again Christian and loved his family very much. He died and was buried in the same city in Vietnam where Duras first met him.
Duras was only 15 at the time of her love affair, which is the age of the heroine in the novel.

External links

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