The lover. Marguerite Duras
a seductive masterpiece of cinematic grace and beauty

"The burst of Chopin under a sky lit up with brilliancies...There wasn't a breath of wind and the music spread all over the dark boat, like a heavenly injunction whose import was unknown, like an order from God whose meaning was inscrutable...and afterwards, she wept because she thought of the man from Cholon and suddenly she wasn't sure she hadn't loved him with a love she hadn't seen because it had lost itself in the affair like water in sand and she rediscovered it only now, through this moment of music flung across the sea."


'Set against the backdrop of French colonial Vietnam, with all the faith and fervor of its native text, The Lover reveals the intimacies and intricacies of a clandestine romance between a pubescent girl from a financially strapped French family and a much older and much wealthier Chinese man. Overlaid with softly indulgent narration by the nonpareil Jeanne Moreau, a provocative Jane March stars in the role of the young Marguerite, with Tony Leung as her refined but reticent paramour.'

'The year is 1929, and a nameless girl, whom we must presume to be the author in the bloom of her youth, is traveling by ferry across the Mekong Delta, on return from a holiday at her family home in the village of Sadec, to her boarding school in Saigon. Self-aware and oozing with nubile allure, this woman-child is at once both tenderly naïve and wise beyond her years. Most telling is the way in which she is dressed, and an evocative passage from the pages of the novel that describes it is brought to life by the microcosmic eye of cinematographer Robert Fraisse'

Source: www.thingsasian.com


Nee, het boek (nog) niet gelezen, maar wel net deze prachtige film gezien...