L'amante

I first saw this movie when I was younger, as one of the most graphic "mainstream" movies available. That was before I ever knew what the word "soft-core" meant.

I watched it again, when I was older, and I finally understand it. The quiet sequences and unemotional facade of the female lead are no longer just boring filler between the exciting love scenes. Perhaps it's because I needed a little more life experience to know the unexpressed feelings of the female character and the expressed feelings of the male character. Sure, this movie is about taboo and tasting forbidden fruit. This movie is about sex. But this movie also has very strong depictions of the other emotions involved in the affair. Shame. Guilt. Racial and social prejudice. Love which is explored when both parties know there can be no future. Emotional detachment born out of necessity, as a "defense mechanism". Being ostracized by your peers, and life in an environment rife with vicious rumors. But mostly the shame and guilt. It's made clearer to me what a former lover of mine may have felt.

To live through all that and then to watch this movie makes for a very personal, moving experience. I can't recommend it to everyone, since every movie experience is unique. But I can say that "The Lover" is much, much more than just an excuse for graphic love scenes. It's a story of a reminiscence... a first time... a shameful secret... a hidden love, fostered through hardship and burning into the mind of the narrator an indelible, permanent mark of memory of a first, life-shaping lover...

In French colonial Indochina, a French girl (Jane March) has two older brothers, Pierre and Paul. Pierre is their mother's favorite despite being a thief and a bully. They're in fear of him. She is repatriating him to France after stealing from an opium den. The family is running out of money for him to steal. On a Mekong river crossing, the girl meets a rich jobless globetrotting playboy Chinaman (Tony Ka Fai Leung). She tells him that she's 17 despite being only 15 and a half. He gives her a ride to her boarding school and starts an erotic affair. Her friend Helene Lagonelle is the only other white girl in the school.

This is a solid example of the sub-genre of exotic erotica. It's got beautiful naked people but it's not quite overt softcore porn. It's more cinematic than the classic Emmanuelle or other pornographic B-movies. The exotic locations look beautiful. It is visually stunning. The acting is competent. These are actual actors. On the other hand, the story is paper thin. The plot isn't much to talk about but that may be besides the point.

L'Amant is a very beautiful, haunting and sensual film. The characters are perfect and acted in a minimalist way that's refreshing.

I see here that the main objections to this film are: 1 .. Not enough character development 2 .. The film does not have a clear direction to where it's going 3 .. Too slow 4 .. Too much sex (for some people if a film has explicit sex it can't be good)

All these objections are pointless:

1 .. The characters here are ordinary people, not that interesting by themselves. It's the love story that's interesting. Both of them know they have no future and try to pretend it's not love. I am sick of films in which the characters are sure they love each other after 30 minutes of "character development".

2 .. The fact that this film does not follow a clear path it's one of it's qualities. It adds more drama and the characters themselves are confused and don't know where they're going. The whole film plays like a dream of love and to request "clear direction" it's pointless.

3 .. Ahh! The "too slow" argument. There are films in this world that make you think about you, your life and the world that's around you. Surely you need some TIME to reflect on that. Short attention-span is a bad thing :).

4 .. This film is about love. The fact that they are shown having sex makes them real persons, with real bodies not some film characters. Sex is an escape from the world around them and I don't think it's too much, too explicit or some nonsense like that. It's so hard to have a film with sex it it that's not trivial! This is a masterpiece by this fact alone.

The persons who "though up" these arguments took the main strengths of the film and complained about them. This for me it's proof enough that they didn't understand this film or that the film didn't struck a single chord in their soul. Short attention span is the main plague of films now and the lack of it is the reason the french make such great films! Please try to see it again and not in a hurry. It's not light cinema! It's great cinema!

I continue to be amazed at what works in this huge experiment in the social imagination we call film.

One thing that really impresses me is how one image will stick in your mind. One image around which it seems the whole rest of the project revolves and supports. I usually write IMDb comments very soon after seeing or reseeing a film.

In this case, I was so struck by that one image I resolved to wait three months before commenting. It stuck.

That image is the one which is used in the promotion and presumably is what the filmmaker considers its essence: the 15 year old girl in defiantly non-school clothes with an incongruous man's hat on the ferry. She is observing and consciously observed. It is we who observe her and enjoy her sensuality then and later just as the Chinese observer does. He is our surrogate, defining the strange situation of a being in the wrong place: Chinese being then more of a 'minority' in Vietnam than Europeans.

Exotic ordinariness. Emerging awarenesses as justification for being. No, more: revelling in existence. Transition as destination.

It is odd how charged this one image is, and how competently it justifies the whole project. Just as the lover is left puzzling why, so are we. So are we, and the fact that no easy answer appears is why this sticks so.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

It's not often I get to see a movie like this. The story of L'Amant potrays a most complex and provocative relationship between a young French girl (Jane March) and a Chinaman (Tony Leung). The two lovers' attraction towards each other are purely physical, but there are a lot of psychological burdens and suffering that they can't break free from, since the two of them are psychologically washed-up people who lives within the shackles of society that they live in. At times they treat each other cruelly while at times they treat each other with tender affection, yet we don't know whether they feel true love for each other or not. That's where the story gets very interesting and different.

The sex scenes are indeed graphic, but by no means done in bad taste or just for the sake of sex. The film is much more than about lust, it is about two lovers who found refuge in each other's arms. Jane March and Tony Leung gave great performances, showing the subtleties of conflicting emotions that they had to endure. Beautifully paced storyline with great atmosphere and soundtrack will make this a worthwhile movie experience. Very highly recommended.