Rating: 
Summary: L'Amant is breathtaking
Review: This is a review of the unrated DVD version of this film. It is so unusual that a cinemagraphic expression lives up to a great work of literature, but Jean-Jacques Annaud gives us the visual rendition of Marguerite Duras' prize winning novel. Annaud captures the poetry and passion of Duras' 1930's Indochina. It is simply a captivating movie to watch. I've seen this movie three times before, but always the Blockbuster "R" version. The sex scenes in the unrated DVD version of the film are simply breathtaking. Contrary to another viewer, below, I find that art and expression of the film is accomplished through the love scenes. After all, the story examines mystery, desire, and forbidden love. The lovers are different, they are more, they are exuberantly liberated when they are together. The love scenes provide the necessary counterpoint to the banality of their lives apart. Their vigorous sexuality underscores the paradox of the rich, and worldly Chinese man who offers himself up to humiliation and abuse from French colonial white-trash, all for the sake of a young girl. Their relationship is viseral and mysterious. Their lovemaking and common language mask yet personify their embodiment of the mutual identities as part of the French and Chinese as colonizers of Vietnam. L'Amant breaks new boundaries as an exploration of forbidden love, anticolonialism, and the suffering people endure because they resign themselves to living their own lies. L'Amant is a beautiful film, brilliantly acted, that says so much by saying so little. The film score by Gabriel Yared is also breathtaking. Cinema doesn't get any better than this. Hollywood is simply incapable of making a movie like this.
Rating:
Summary: Great Sexpectations?
Review: The first time I heared about "The Lover", I was in highschool and it was one of those films that my fellow pupils scandalously giggled about in the corner. In fact, one day when my parents weren't home, my best friend and I mischieviously decided to rent this "borderline porn flick" and get an eyeful of what all the hoopla was about.
While I expected various (and potentially continuous) horizontal aerobics, it was to my surprise that I actually liked this film and it had absolutely nothing to do with sex.
With my 16-year-old mind, I couldn't understand why I liked such a "dirty movie."
Was I a pervert? Perhaps.
But most likely, I think I was just a curious teenager.
About thirteen years later, I watched this movie again and this time I loved it.
While I've not yet read the novel, I still love this movie - because finally, I understood why the young French girl cried the way she did as she was leaving on the ferry and realized that she will never be the same again.
Rating:
Summary: just enjoy
Review: I really tire of all the pretentious waffle about this film. It's simply a film worth watching with believable characters in a time long since made history by war and commerce. The georgeous cinematography is only surpassed by the haunting ,award winning score. Just see it!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Mixed Feelings
Review: I have read Duras' "The Lover" countless times, and have always been astounded by the surreal, hypnotic, yet sublime writing style of the short novel; for this reason, it took a long time for me to be able to watch a movie about the book. I knew I would be disappointed.
If anything, after I finally viewed this film, I came away with a mixed feeling about it. Certainly, the most pulling character of this movie is the utterly beautiful Jane March, herself part Chinese, but playing a French girl in Indochine. She really does look somewhat like Duras and gives of a very mysterious intensity; however, in the book, her Chinese lover was supposedly very frail and thin, and very much unlike the lead actor, so it's hard for me to imagine him as the lover from her book.
Also, the movie focuses too much, far too much, on sex scenes. Instead of focusing on the hypnotic intensity of the book, the dream-like images, the sad recollections, the lovely poetic contortions of Duras' language, this movie basically revolves around explicit sex scenes. I have no problem with sex scenes or sex in a story, but this went a bit overboard and took away the focus of the deeply emotional/psychological tone of the story by obsessing too much on the visceral sex.
Duras' story was far more than sex. It was about a love unto death, as she would say . . . it was about sex, but intertwined with so many conflicting and deep-rooted emotions that this movie could never portray.
Rating:
Summary: WEAR SUNGLASSES TO AVOID SCORCHED EYEBALLS
Review: Jane March is hotter standing at a ship's rail fully clothed than any given adult film actress plying her trade.
Wonderful acting by her and John Leung. As another reviewer here has noted, the story unfolds so naturally and inevitably.
The lovers are beautiful and charming, although some may judge their affair as immoral. Those who consign this fine film to the category of pornography show insensitivity on a number of levels.
I highly recommend this film for its beauty and honesty.
Rating:
Summary: a great adaptation
Review: Since I've always loved the book, I was glad to find this movie. It's not often that I've seen a movie that captures the essence of the book it was based on so well. And for those who say this is just a soft-core porn, while I'll admit that even the rated version was a little more graphic than most R-rated movies, it was relevant to the story line; it was not just in there to be gratuitous. I don't think the sex scenes change the fact that it was a great story.
Rating:
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.(...)
Rating:
Summary: Visually stunning, well-told story
Review: This movie has one thinking what sex and love is. Can sex and love go hand in hand? That is the question of what the movie brought to my attention. I saw this movie on an independent film channel and the character, a young girl, has an affair with an older Chinese man. Her family struggles financially. The mother is a widowed schoolteacher and her brothers are obnoxious and want to get into her personal life. She does introduce her lover to her family and he does treat them to dinner. However, what was puzzling was their relationship. Did they actually have real feelings toward one another? He was arranged to be married and there would have never been anything more between them.
This movie diffrentiates between sex and love. Is it possible to have a sex only relationship? If so, how can it last? Do emotional feelings get in the way of their relationship?
Duras was experimenting sex for the first time. It was an experience that she would carry through her adult life.
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