L'Amant (1992)
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud

Film Review

L'Amant is a sensual big budget adaptation of Marguerite Duras's internationally successful biographical novel of the same title (winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1984).   The film has the exceptional glossy production values that we have come to expect of Oscar-winning director Jean-Jacques Annaud - lavish period sets and evocative photography in one of the world's most beautiful locations.  Visually, the film is stunning and provides an authentic portrait of 1920s Indochina.    Where the film is perhaps lacking is in conveying the innermost feelings, thoughts and motivations of the characters involved in the drama.  Everything is on the surface, the protagonists feel too impersonal, and consequently the film feels detached, sometimes cold, even superficial.   Too much is left to Jeanne Moreau's sultry narration of Duras's exquisite prose to supply the essential human dimension which seems to be missing elsewhere.   In any event, L'Amant is an engaging film, a beautifully composed portrait of a turbulent young love in a foreign climate.

Film Synopsis

In Indochina, towards the end of the 1920s, a 15-year-old French girl bids her adieux to her impoverished mother and her two brothers and boards the coach that will take her back to her boarding school in Saigon where she will complete her studies.  On the way, her attention is drawn to a good-looking and conspicuously well-off Chinese man.  He notices her and offers her a lift in his limousine.  From this first meeting it is apparent to them both that they are strongly attracted to one another.  Now settled in Saigon, the girl continues to meet up with her handsome stranger and they become passionate lovers.  But it is an affair that can go nowhere.  She is a poor French girl; he is an heir to a fortune and forbidden to marry outside his own caste.  On learning of the liaison, the girl's mother sees an easy way to extort money from the rich Chinese man to benefit herself and her sons, but the girl refuses to play the part of a prostitute.  After her lover marries the girl is disappointed that he no longer keeps their appointments.  She must return to France and begin a new life.  Many years later the Chinese man lets her know that he still loves her, and has always loved her...