Jean-Jacques Annaud

In The Lover, the fusion of the strange with the erotic is based not only on sexual urge and age differences, precisely on class and racial differences as well. It is these differences that heighten the erotic for the cardinal main characters. The movie's focus in on the heaviness of the sexual relationship rather than the oppression of colonial rule in Indochina, first by the Chinese and then by the French. Although there are scenes depicting the lives of the natives on a lower floor colonial rule selling good in the marketplace, wait tables, pulling rickshaws for rich people the main concern of the conduct is the erotic, the fille's sexual awakening from virgin to assertive sexuality, and the man's sexual infantile fixation and growing love for the girl. The secret nature of the clandestine purpose only adds to the sexual excitement.

The movie is titled The Lover, not The Lovers, and it is the Chinese man (Tony Leung) who is the lover, and the girl the beloved. The movie is told from the perspective of the unnamed girl (Jane March) and narrated by Jeanne Moreau, as the girl-turned-woman many years later. The opening branch of the film reveals the differences in class and age between the two characters, as well as the sexual attraction. The girl is travel to boarding school in Saigon. As the boat pulls in, she is rock on the railing, wearing a rather threadbare, low-cut dress, a pair of sexy high heels, and a man's brown fedora. An exotic picture, not just the dress but the ha

Millet, Kate. Sexual Politics. New York: Doubleday

The superior attitude of the problem-ridden, beggary stricken family of the girl is vividly brought out during a eating place scene with the lover and the girl's family. The French mother and brother take out sloppy drunk, act crudely, and never mention the racially out of the question love affair. The lover tries to buy the girl's "love and her loutish family's respect, but they remain bigots yet as they line their pockets with his bills and guzzle his booze" (Kempley). They accept the affair because they are living on the notes the girl receives from her lover. As branch of the restaurant scene, the girl's brother challenges the clink to a fight.

The rather passive lover refuses, but brooks even by having brutalizing sex with the girl, something he has never done before. In fact, he has been the most tender and considerate of lovers.

t as well, for at that time females did not wear men's hats in Indochina. As young girls do, she is daydreaming of becoming a woman. She presents a sensual image, an image that is observed by the Chinaman who is organism chauffeured in his large, black Citroen limousine. The next scene shows the limo on the dock, and the Chinaman, obviously smitten with desire, offering the girl a jaw to town. Impressed, the girl accepts, setting the stage for their affair. He enters it for the promise of true up passion. She enters it for the promise of sex and money, and perhaps a chance to "get even" with her family. "The girl hates her life hates the bloody-mindedness of her teachers and fellow students, and the descent of her impaired family into depravity. Of the man we learn less; he comes from a proud old family, and his bride will be selected for him according to the ancient ways" (Ebert). Both enter the affair for the excitement it offers, an emotion heightened by each acting as the exotic for the other.

The last part of the film shows the girl leaving Saigon for France, just as the send-off
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