The Lover
Short description
Set in French Indochina in the late 1920s, The Lover centres on a French teenage girl from a family in financial decline who begins a secret affair with a wealthy, older Chinese man. She meets him on her way back to Saigon, where she attends a boarding school, and their meetings continue out of sight of her family and respectable colonial society. The relationship is shaped by the gaps between them: age, money and culture. Their attachment unfolds against families and social rules that cannot accommodate it. The film is based on Marguerite Duras's novel of the same name, published in 1984.
Jean-Jacques Annaud directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Gérard Brach; Claude Berri produced. It followed Annaud's The Bear and came before Seven Years in Tibet in a run of features that began with Quest for Fire in 1981. Jane March plays the young girl and Tony Leung Ka-fai plays the Chinese heir, with Frédérique Meininger, Arnaud Giovaninetti, Melvil Poupaud and Lisa Faulkner among the cast of 24 credited performers.
Released in January 1992, the film took about 5 million dollars worldwide. Audiences are divided: on IMDb it holds 6.8 out of 10 from roughly 25,000 votes, and on TMDB it sits at 7 out of 10 from 782 votes. Critics were less favourable, with a critics' rating of 4.8 out of 10 from 25 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- Although the Vietnamese government at this time had moved away from isolationism and was friendly to foreigners, all filming and script work was carried out in agreement with the authorities. Therefore, all scenes of a sexual nature were filmed in Paris. The filming took a total of 135 days.
- A 1920s steamboat, which arrived in Ho Chi Minh City from Cyprus, was used to film two main scenes.
- The film is based on Marguerite Duras' novel "The Lover" (L'amant, 1984).
- Filming began on January 14, 1991. Two months after this date, Jane March turned eighteen. It was her first role in a film, but she was already a top model. The director's wife saw her photo in Just Seventeen magazine and brought her to his attention.
- Vietnam provided the film crew with one of its government helicopters.
- Director Anno visited Vietnam in 1989 as part of preparations for filming, but was disappointed with the conditions (rats and spiders in the best colonial hotel, lack of air conditioning, and so on). As a result, he decided to film the movie about Vietnam where Western directors traditionally did – in Thailand, Malaysia, or the Philippines. A year later, he decided to film in Vietnam again. According to the studio and the director, their film was the first Western film about Vietnam since 1975 to be filmed in Vietnam itself.
- When the film was being shot in Ho Chi Minh City, employees of the Soviet consulate and trade mission were recruited to participate in the mass scenes (in the restaurant, boarding house, and on the ship).
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