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The Lover (L'amant) (1992)

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Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 4
Fresh: 0 | Rotten: 4

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Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 7,983

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Movie Info

The Lover is director Jean-Jacques Annaud's adaptation of Marguerite Duras' minimalist 1984 novel. Set in French Indochina in 1929, the film explores the erotic charge of forbidden love. Jane March plays a French teenager sent to a Saigon boarding school, while Tony Leung is a 32-year Chinese aristocrat. They look at each and they both see a blinding white flash; it's kismet. He offers her a ride in his limousine and soon they meet in his "bachelor room" where they revel in a wide variety of

Dec 11, 2001

MGM

Cast

All Critics (19) | Top Critics (5) | Fresh (3) | Rotten (12)

Scratch away the steamy, evocative surface, remove Jeanne Moreau's veteran-voiced narration, and you have only art-film banalities.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Washington Post | Comment
Washington Post
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Annaud and his collaborators have got all of the physical details just right, but there is a failure of the imagination here; we do not sense the presence of real people behind the attractive facades of the two main actors.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | Comment
Chicago Sun-Times
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Never mind that in portraying passion, the two seem to be demonstrating the proper use of the Salad Shooter.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Washington Post | Comment
Washington Post
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Too bad that the film is marred by the vices of international productions, as it deals with issues seldom shown in American movies, such as the power of sexuality.

January 24, 2007 Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | Comment

Stylish if somewhat tedious study of a young Vietnamese woman who falls under the spell of an older dandy.

March 14, 2003 Comment (1)
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)

The worst part of the dialog is given to the writer. She has to say one pedantic line after another, and overall, the narrator's part is just too wordy.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Internet Reviews | Comment
Internet Reviews

The only moderately interesting scene here is a traditional Chinese wedding toward the end, which, of course, is cut short.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Deseret News, Salt Lake City | Comment
Deseret News, Salt Lake City
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for The Lover (L'amant)

On the whole, L'amant strikes me as aloof and disconnected. It has aspirations of being elevated and artsy but offers no reason for empathy or audience connection with the characters. In the end I didn't really care whether or not the two lovers stayed together or parted ways. A beautiful but rather hollow film.

January 18, 2009
flixsterman
Randy Tippy

Super Reviewer

This movie is set in 1920s Saigon. On a chance encounter on a ferry crossing a rich Chinese man in his 30s meets a French school girl. They start an affair. He loves her but she seems to stay with him for his money as her family are poor. He wants to marry her but is forbidden because of their race and his father has

June 16, 2010
thmtsang
Candy Rose

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • L'amant (FR)
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