There are many who would look at this film today or read Duras’s novel The Lover and consider both some kind of endorsement for pedophilia. To do so, would is to limit what this story is really about. If it’s a morality play, which I don’t think it is, it would have to do with what happens when a child feels unloved and goes about seeking it elsewhere. But this again is too neat of an understanding or analysis; it’s too shallow and easy.
In actuality, The Lover is both a complicated story as well as a simple one. It’s about desire, sexual desire– and in some ways, yes, it is about love, but that is not, despite the film’s name, the primary focus of the film. The underlying current here is that raw and primal thing that all of us has sought at some point in our lives, breasts heaving, heart racing, mouth ripening, begging to be kissed. Who has not felt such desire and longing. It may in fact happen at inappropriate times or when you least expect it or want it, but that is the nature of desire. No other film conveys this feeling quite as well as The Lover, and it does so without any kind of moral judgment. It’s not “bad” to be just sexually involved without love. Nor is it wrong in any way or is judgment passed if one does fall in love, as the Chinese man does with the young girl. Things just are what they are, and under the circumstances and the climate at the time, things that perhaps would not be accepted are accepted for what they are.
War and oppression change everything, and this film is set in 1920s colonial Vietnam, when native Asians and whites were to be kept separate. The power differential between the Lover (Tony Leung) who is part of a small faction that forms a wealthy Chinese enclave in Vietnam and Jane March (who plays the young girl) and who is be a poor, French national is an important part of this film. It’s no surprise that the young girl feels powerless in so many ways. Why should it surprise us then, that when she realizes the fantastic power she has over at least this one man, and likely others, that she would use it to turn the tables somewhat. Feeling powerless in the country you live, in your home, school, pretty much everywhere, would be enough to motivate you to use what little power you did have once and if you discovered it.
At school, her friend tells her about another girl named Alice who was a prostitute behind the schools’ back wall. The young girls says it has “always appealed” to her,” to go with men you don’t know. You don’t even see them.” “You never know their face,” she tells her friend, who is lying in bed next to her, fascinated by this. . Every woman is like that, they agree. All women feel this way, at least, that is what these two young girls dream up one night in bed in their boarding school dormitory. Can we blame them that both would “rather be prostitutes” they agree, than endure this boarding school where, according to them, they are bred and raised to eventually take care of the “lepers, the cholera stricken.” Given the choice, I just might do the same. It doesn’t sound so bad, particularly if you happen to have a man who is so nervous, like our Chinaman.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
very nuanced and exceptional review - life can be very complicated and pretending it isn't so doesn't change it
2 - srp
Eric - absolutely right. it's all shades of grey, really. Part of me wants so much to believe in Absolutes - you know, Right/Wrong - but it's never so simple, tho' i wish it were so. Interesting and that's a whole article|blog in itself - shades of grey are the hardest things to negotiate in this life -- for me anyway.
~~~srp
3 - Eric Olsen
another lesson from this: perky breasts are dangerous
4 - srp
eric eric
true true true
*
*~}
5 - ryan
thanks for restating everything you could learn from just reading the book.
6 - sadi
yeah, well, you know some people hadn't read the book, and since i published Duras's LAST BOOK before she died when i was a book publisher, i felt i had something to say. Thing is, nobody made you read it, and if you know so much, then go write your own review. I never said this was my best, but then, perhaps you hadn't seen other work and even if you had, you'd have some pithy comment about that too.
Since you seem to know so much, how about you sign up and educate all of us, because really, we are all just hanging on your every word and awaiting your wisdom, and fuck, just because i corresponded with Duras and she allowe dme to publish her book and my husband published her first (uh, that would be this one reviewed here), you're right. What the hell would i know. That said, i could have done a much better job but it was an off day,
but as i said; i'm assuming you never have off days since you so freely attack the work of others, so i'm waiting, practically shaking with anticipation, to read your forthcoming reviews.
Line 'em up. Send us the links. I'm sure all of us here at Blogcritics have a great deal to learn from a brain like you.
Really -- . Not kidding. Educate us. After all, we're all stupid here.
Just ask Eric - i'm sure he'll agree. Right?
Thanks though, for such a clever, thoughtful, and very brave comment!
Aren't you too clever by half.
7 - Mark Saleski
wow! sadi channels dawn olsen!!
who woulda thunk it?
;-)
8 - sadi
mark, you crack me up...
love,
s.
9 - kbee
The presentation of a 15 year old child having "sexual power" dovetails perfectly with the delusions of pedaphiles. The rapist's "she really wanted it" argument shows up again and again, regardless of whether the victim is 5 years old, or 15, or 95. Look at the cover photo for the film. How can you look at a pathetic, deranged adult man checking out a child's ass and not want to stop him?
10 - Cerulean
The Lover was a very powerful book. There's a line either from the book or from the movie saying, "In the dessert that was the rest of their lives." I was was particularly moved by that. It's in the movie. I looked for it in the book but couldn't find it. Is it there, Sadi? Where?
When the book came out, a friend gave me a copy and said that I reminded her of the girl in the book. Not that I was some guy's mistress, but I dressed kind of like that and I grew up in an exotic place where whites were a minority . . .
Sadi, if you were Margarite Duras's publisher, would you please tell us about that. I want to know about it.
11 - anna
hey sadi,
thanks for the review it was really good. i havent actually seen the movie but it seems pretty close to the novel. i have to do a presentation on it (the novel) for uni and needed some background cos im pretty slack and havent thought 2 much about it. anyway, very thought provoking. the theme of my unit is 'difference and desire' and your review really helped me realise how that plays in the novel. top stuff,
thanks again, Anna
12 - sadi ranson-polizzotti
hi there:
I"m not sure where the exact line you speak of is, probably toward the end of the book would be my guess, but you can, i believe, search the book on Amazon for specific phrases, so try that.
AS for publishing Duras: Yes, i published her very last book (i believe this was her last according to the agent who represented it, a very reputable agent) and the book is entitled simply "Writing" or "Ecrire" in French. It was translated by Mark Polizzotti (my husband) and published by Lumen Editions, which was my publishing imprint that i ran for years when i worked in book publishing (he still does: i'm in IT but still on the fringe of books, since i've done it for so long...)
Mark suggested that Random House publish The Lover when he read it in France and he saved all of his notes back and forth with the editors. They "did not think an American audience would accept this book" or something like that (not a direct quote, but i do have the correspondence back and forth just for a lark).
How funny, then, that we both, as editors, published Duras, wound up getting married and were both told that Duras would not sell in America. And here we are... her books have done very well and The Lover is a classic among a certain group of people anyway ~~ I could go on, but don't wish to bore others w/ this history of mine etc etc. Maybe one day i'll write it all up in a memoir no one will buy, lol...
Be well,
Sadi
13 - sadi ranson-polizzotti
the earlier points about pedophelia, that i did not see until now are well-taken. You make a valid point andI can't address it really because The Lover was based, as I understand it, on Duras's life experience, which she often drew on for her fiction - so it's likely partially anyway, a true story of her youth. It's hard to know with her. So this doesn't make it okay but if she wants to write about her life then what can i say about that other than to review the work and that's that.... but i get your point.
thanks,
s.r.p.
14 - shees
now that this page has gone necro...
15 - sadi ranson-polizzotti
quoi?