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Summary: French Vietnam society around an erotic love story.
Review: Based on the experiences of the author Marguerite Duras, it combines an eye-opening view of pre-communist Indochina with an erotic love story. Magnificently photographed with subtlety and irony, it is both a torrid and despairing story well-told about a bit of history that is little-known in the U.S. The affair between the French girl from an impoverished family and the weak son of a rich Chinese merchant is doomed from the start, but plays itself out with believable acting and fine cinematography. A feast for the eyes and the mind. (I am amazed at the ignorance and prudishness of the other reviewers on the Amazon site.)
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Summary: March shows love unrequited but unsaid. Slow & touching
Review: March's young lady has spunk and knowledge that defy the typical person of her upbringing. While at a boarding school she meets a foreigner who works his way into her heart. The boarding school friend is set aside as March goes forth with boldness and passion rarely seen. Is it a show for love, passion, or money? The patient proactive lover wants his heart but follows the culture. He plays the role fine but March lives it and so naturally too. Explicit yet not a voyeur movie. Love interwines in a beautiful story that can be true. But, is March in self-denial with her reason for the love? Or is she just so cool and detached? March's performance is superb. Is this an older person with a teen body and passionate spirit. The young son is cowardly and the older a despicable bully. The mother seems overwhelmed but goes along knowing the bully has taken her heart and $$. March comes to the rescue of the family and maybe herself. This deserves a sequel, not to see the lover but to learn how March fares in the US. Well directed. The khaki dress and shabby sexy hat mask deep poignancy but is it staged or supressed. I am still unsure. March is magnificient. Why is she being hidden? Are movie makers repressed, too? A+ picture with sadness and poignancy. I yearn to know if March has masked or feels her words for "loving." Very powerful but can be slow for the impatient. Slow can also be beautiful. It is!
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Summary: Beatiful!
Review: I have seen this movie several times. It's so romantic in a strange way. I have found myself infatuated with the whole story. If only they really could have been together, It's exciting to watch two different cultures fall in love and yet sad because they are not aloud to fall in love with one another. I suggest that you take a look into this movie, And THE LOVERs too!
Rating: 
Summary: Okay romantic drama nearly ruined by the awful voice-over.
Review: Fairly well directed, visually sumptuous, The Lover could've been at the very least an aesthetic pleasure. Sparks do fly between Tony Leung Kar-fai and Jane March (despite their inability for dramatic depth and subtext); they look terrific onscreen.Then the voice jumps in. Jeanne Moreau's old-woman voice-over completely sabotages the intimacy and hushed romantic tones of the first encounter. Over the film, Moreau's terrible voice-over would intrude with alarming frequency, telling the viewer what s/he already knows, and in an absolutely nauseous way. Why tell us "Then he was gripped by fear" when the actor can play it onscreen? (As limited Leung is, he can play that.) Why make the cinematic literary? Above all, why have an old woman tell a young girl's story, thus giving the narrator a hefty, arrogant "I-know-better" stance so that the story is almost reduced to being an entry in the Better Sex video series? The Lover's highbrow aspirations will make you feel guilty for not liking it. Resist the temptation, however -- high or low art, The Lover is mediocre filmmaking, with insufficient complexity to match its visual flair and un-self-conscious sensuality -- its two redeeming factors.
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Summary: The Lover
Review: I Love this vidao! My Best 1 Video
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Summary: Excellent cinematographic interpretation of Duras' novel
Review: This is a movie that can be seen many times, both due to the beauty of its cinematography and its many layers of meaning. The film manages to capture the flow of Duras' prose. In some ways, it is even more beautiful and subtle. March and Leung are so sexy it hurts, and this film has some of the most beautiful erotic scenes that I have seen in a long time.
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Summary: A lesson in feeling
Review: Sheer sumptuousness and natural subtlety of the highest caliber. But above all it is an exercise in feeling. Note simple things like a moment of a swirling reflection of tropical plants on the hood of the car inside which two people are discovering each other, or a scene of two women observing one another as their cars pass. An unaffected simplicity of emotion--things can be just that beautiful. Incredible!
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Summary: Four stars for pure eroticism amid cultural contrasts!
Review: What an intriguing, beguiling tale. It is a study in sexual awakening for a young woman, seduction by an older, experienced man, and cultural tension between East and West. Would any American director know how to present this marvelous sensuality in such frank, yet beautiful images? My partner, who has been so very leary of on-screen sexuality, loved it! And so did I. One of the few films I have chosen to purchase for future screenings. If my review strikes a note, be sure to get the unrated version.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, but not developed enough
Review: As fans of the novel know, "The Lover" is a sensual delight, not just for the sex, but because of Marguerite Duras' luminous prose. The film manages to capture the quality of Duras' prose through brilliant cinematography that is at times both delicate and brutal. Watching the leads cavort in the man's dark, musty bedroom lit only by the cracks in window blinds is quite a treat, if one is inclined to enjoy such pursuits. Tony Leung and Jane March are sufficiently beautiful to hold interest, but not enough for the inordinate amount of screen time they are given solely indulging in the pleasures of Venus. The girl's outside relationships, particularly those with her mother and younger brother, are relegated to the background to the movie's detriment. Marguerite Duras' novel is a delicate balance of eroticism and family dissent, and the film would have rated 5 stars had it achieved the same balance. But "The Lover" is saved by glorious cinematography and the charisma of liliputian Jane March, who has a heartbreakingly gorgeous final scene.
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Summary: The Lover - A Passionate Love Story
Review: For those who think this movie is only carnal, I extend my deepest sympathies for your apparent ignorance. This is a romeo and juliet parallel not to be missed. This is one of, if not the best, love story ever written. It tells of a young woman, barely 17, whose life is already a tragedy. Her family was thrown from wealth and good standing, to poverty and squalor, scraping by to make ends meet in French occupied Vietnam. She is all but shakespearean in her suffering, without the guidance of a father, and the love of a weak and unscrupulous mother and drug addicted brother. There is much tenderness in the cannonization of the youngest brother, as a living saint, the one pure thing in her life. The lover, played by Tony Leung Kai Fai, is himself, a tragic hero. Educated in France, he longs to shirk the burden of his chinese culture, buck tradition and marry for love. He is consumed by the forced arranged marriage, and pursues the young Jane March with the guile of an experienced and wealthy man, but with the tenderness and respect of a true lover. The two make an arrangement to meet in his bachelor pad, which according to chinese tradition, is a "practice area" for marriage. Jane March's young virgin surrenders to passion and experience, while remaining emotionally detatched from her chinese lover, for he tells her that they can "never be married" as it is "not allowed", and he would be disowned and poverty stricken if he went against the wishes of his family. Seemingly, Jane March's character cares little for the potential of this toxic relationship, revelling only in the sexual experience and conversation that they share in their secret room, away from the rest of the world. He is her escape, as surreal as the life she escapes from. The scenes are intimate and touching, full of tenderness and imagery that conveys the worship like reverence with which they experience each other. He, worshiping her sexual innocence, while she worships his sexual experience. A powerful and erotic culmination. Truly as story continues, you believe each of the characters less and less, as they joke about how they would not fit in to each others world. They do a wonderful job trying to convince each other that the affair means nothing. It becomes less believable, as you see them fall deeper and deeper into love, and examples of arguments where they truly hurt each other, in the way that only two people in love can wound. A truly touching ending that had me in tears, as her ship pulls away from the harbour and he is there, in his car, watching her leave. Highly recommend this movie as a measure to restore your faith in the very real power and strength of love, even when there is no "story book" ending.(...)
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