L'amant is well made and comprehensive, the story and characterization empty and soulless however.

From Jean-Jacques Annaud, who also directed "Enemy at the Gates." The actress chosen, a little conflicting in appearance to the story being told combined with the narration. Solid visually though and engages enough, I liked the symbolization of the hands coming together in the car. The secondary characters and performances were terrible though.

The director of L'AMANT or THE LOVER as it's known in Britain was directed Jean Jacques Annaud who would later go on to make ENEMY AT THE GATES a pretty good war film that suffers from having a sex scene that seems out of place . The problem with his earlier movie is that everything else feels out of place except the sex scenes

Am I alone in thinking this is a ridiculous movie ? The sex scenes are pretty explicit which may shock large portions of the audience but the non sexual scenes that drive the narrative seem to contradict the shock . It's supposedly to have been inspired by the true story of a French teenager who embarked on a relationship with a Chinese man in the early 20th century which shocked France at the time . Of course sexual mores were different in those days and the idea of inter racial sex may be rather blase nowadays but this taboo is even more diluted by the casting of English actress Jane March who looks anything but French / White European , in fact she looks like she's of Asian extraction herself ! Apologies if I'm wrong of Ms March's ethnic origins but that's how she looks . Couldn't the director have employed some artistic license and cast a blond actress so the audience are in no doubt that this is a story of lust between two people of different ethnic backgrounds ? Even the intrusive female voice over sounds like it's coming from an Asian actress and not a French woman !

As for the story itself - What story ? It's basically plot less with several scenes that seem to have either started or have finished too soon ( Watch this movie and tell me if the editor has done an awful job or not ) and occasionally a scene appears where the two protagonists have sweaty sex in bed or on a floor and considering everything I've said the only real topic of conversation surrounding this movie when it was released is how explicit they were for a relatively mainstream movie . Who was it said " Sex sells " ? Probably the distributors of THE LOVER

When this film started off, I had no idea in just what direction this film was going to take me. The photography in Vietnam was outstanding and Jane March(The Young girl) and her famous "Mans Hat" had me quite confused. However, when Tony Leung Ka (The Chinaman) appeared on the screen and started making SPARKS with Jane March, I realized that this was a very deep and beautiful love story that really went way beyond the bedroom mattress. This film showed that LOVE will break down all walls of bigotry, race or religious beliefs and even an age gap cannot stop the love between a man or woman or young lady. It is very sad that this couple could never grow old together and be able to look back at their wonderful romantic experiences! A deep film with a great message, don't miss it!