L'amant

IMDb RATING

6.8/10

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POPULARITY

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Play trailer0:57

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Period Drama Biography Drama Romance

In 1929 French Indochina, a French teenage girl embarks on a reckless and forbidden romance with a wealthy, older Chinese man, each knowing that knowledge of their affair will bring drastic ... Read allIn 1929 French Indochina, a French teenage girl embarks on a reckless and forbidden romance with a wealthy, older Chinese man, each knowing that knowledge of their affair will bring drastic consequences to each other.In 1929 French Indochina, a French teenage girl embarks on a reckless and forbidden romance with a wealthy, older Chinese man, each knowing that knowledge of their affair will bring drastic consequences to each other.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.8/10

24K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

3,503

See production info at IMDbPro

Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 3 wins & 7 nominations total

User reviews115

Featured review

One Image

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.

tedg
Jun 1, 2004
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Videos1

Trailer 0:57

The Lover

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
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.

Goofs
Her lover smokes filtered cigarettes in 1929. They were not invented until the mid-'30s and not in common use until the 1950s.

Quotes
[last lines]
Narrator: Years after the war, after the marriages, the children, the divorces, the books, he had come to Paris with his wife. He had phoned her. He was intimidated; his voice trembled, and with the trembling it had found the accent of China again. He knew she'd begun writing books. He had also heard about the younger brother's death. He had been sad for her. And then he had no more to tell her. And then he told her - he had told her that it was as before, that he still loved her, that he would never stop loving her, that he would love her until his death.