Le Amant

Nice poster.

1992 was a prominent year for film maker  Jean Jacques Annaud and for the French cinema industry in general. French erotica masterpiece Le Amant, AKA The Lover was and still is one of the most  important erotic films ever made. Jean-Jacques Annaud's film version of Marguerite Duras, one of France's most esteemed writers, is quite erotic... told from the perspective of a 15-and-a-half-year-old French girl, who learns very early about passion, love and heartbreak...

It's the crossing of the river... The crossing, on a ferry, of one of the branches of the Mekong, in the great plains of mud and rice of southern Indochina...

A pretty young girl goes back to Saigon... She is standing on the deck, extremely defiant, wearing a silk dress, a pair of 'cabaret' high heels, and a man's hat... She is approached by an elegant dark man from Cholon who is also crossing the Mekong that day towards Saigon... 'I like your hat. It's original. A man's hat on a young girl,' he expresses, and continues: 'If you want I can drive you to Saigon.'

Forbidden love.

The rich Chinese playboy with a black Rolls-Royce is 32 years old, from that financial minority that owns all the popular housing of the colony... He's back from Paris where he undertook some business studies...

The film, beautifully shot, is a dreamy fantasy of escape through sex... The escape is that of the poor French teenager from the horror of her house in Sa-Dec... While the girl merely abides her innocent mother, she loves her younger brother poetically, without reserve... Her brother is handsome but not bright, romantic but terribly fragile... She fears her elder brother, a brutal and lawless dissolute man, stupidly dependent on his mother... The inexperienced girl wants to see him in pain...

The most remarkable aspect of the story is the strength of character of the young girl who is always a little sad... She finds the strength to proceed against the forbidden with a calm determination... "I've never followed anyone into a room yet.," she exclaims... 

Old rich man getting some fresher than expected dessert.

15 years old teen gone wild, seriously.

Jane March is a pro, she fucks for real if she has to.

The room was dark, shipwrecked, surrounded by the never-ending clamor of the town, carried away by the flow of the town... Her body was in that public noise... Their love was erotic, immediate, unrestrained... It was physical, violent, devastating...

But the girl loves other young woman in the boarding house, the 17-year-old Helen... Her passion for Helene is intense... Helen is immodest... She don't realize she walks naked in the dormitory... She doesn't know that she's very beautiful... She's innocent lingering on in youth...

'The Lover' parallels the life of Duras herself... The setting, in Indochina, is one she knows intimately... The story is set mostly in the early 1920s following the decline of French domination of the territory that is now Vietnam... The film is the most exciting journey along a winding river of passion, which ultimately flows to the sea... 

Wash her good old man.

Now fuck her good.

No more cum for today naughty teen.

Jean-Jacques Annaud handles the story with real sensuality, romance and dramatic power... He shots much of the film with a distinguished style...

Jane March is attractive, Her impressionable teenager's gradual understanding of sexuality is well presented... She was subjected to a close, penetrating gaze by Annaud's camera.. In fact I dare to say she is the key element in the movie. Her astonishing french beauty makes her actually look as if she was a growing up teenage girl.

Tony Leung, as the rich Chinaman, is the lusty son unable to escape his family's commands...

Although unseen, Jeanne Moreau jaded voice narrates the action and imparts a special flavor... Her words are poetry, as any Duras reader knows... 

Overall, The Lover is a beatiful movie, perhaps one of the most beautiful approaches ever filmed about the female sexuality, although it is not about adult female sexuality, there are still some elements that turn the film into a respectful look at sex unlike most of the softcore sexploitation films that create a fictional view about sex where girls are always looking to get laid, something that is not quite like that in real life.

One final thought, the film industry has always looked at forbidden love in affairs featuring an underage character, I know these are just movies, but if this was to happen in real life you'd be stepping into the borderlines of pedophilia and that man is fucking sick. However the film is not about "abusing an underage girl" it is more about the way past generations looked at love, unlike other films like "Lolita", "Cindy & Donna" & "The Babysiter" that were merely a perv look at teenage sexuality.

Here's the movie trailer: