The film is based on the autobiographical novel by French author Marguerite Duras, whose real-life romance with a Chinese man in colonial Vietnam caused a scandal.
All the sex scenes were done with careful choreography and body doubles. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud implied the sex was real to boost publicity for the film. The English tabloid press trumpeted the rumor on its front pages for days, making life so miserable for Jane March and her family that she got physically sick, had a nervous breakdown, then fled to the Seychelles to escape. Annaud later stated "At first I was flattered people believed [the sex]. But after that... I stopped doing press in Britain. Of course they didn't have sex."
Jane March plays a European teenager who causes a scandal for having an affair with a Chinese man in Vietnam. In real life, March is of partial Chinese and Vietnamese descent.
The Motion Picture Association of America gave the original cut of the film a rating of NC-17. MGM appealed after cutting three minutes of the film. Coupled with pleas from the director, MGM, and a sex educator who argued that the cut version was no more illicit than the sexual thriller Instinto Selvagem (1992), the film's rating was changed to R.
Jane March's first acting role. In an interview with the L.A. Times in Oct. 1992, she said "I had never done a movie in my life. I had never acted before. The first time I saw the film complete, I sat in the screening room and cried. It was the end of my adventure, the end of my first escapade in life."