The Lover 4K 1992 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

30s. Colonial Saigon. A handsome, wealthy, sophisticated Chinese man meets a French woman. She is fifteen years old. Their love is under parental restrictions. But such an “empire of senses”, captivating and strong, cannot be destroyed by anyone.

Review 4K Movie

The 'lover' was very unlucky already at the moment of its birth: the film was loudly and uncompromisingly rejected by Marguerite Duras herself, who stated that what was embodied on the screen had absolutely nothing to do with the book taken as a screenplay and could not be considered otherwise than "purely personal fantasies of a certain Mr. Anno." And with this stigma on its forehead, set by the author's weighty, race-carrying hand, the film had to fight its way through. Unsurprisingly, the critics' attitude towards' The Lover 'was initially more than cool. And it is not surprising that the film never really sounded, forever remaining in the shadow of the conditionally close thematically, but incomparably weaker 'Indochina', which was released a couple of months later - all on the same wave of awakened in the stubs of the once mighty empires scattered across Europe interest - for the first time painless, for the first time decently aloof - in the aesthetics and exoticism of the twilight of colonialism.

Since yes, Anno's film is much more weighed down by the 'burden of the whites', longing for a different sky, world and moment than the burden of existence, fatigue, pain and nostalgia that set the tone for Duras's novel. Formally declared by the opening shots as a memory, as Proust's search for lost time, at first similar to the process of gradual development of the old film, wasted by time and rodents, the film very quickly goes beyond the novel framework, acquires a tangible reality (insulted by the writer as an illegal primitivization of her design), and together with tangibility - the very eroticism that has become the trademark of this work. And eroticism is inconceivable without material concreteness, felt by all the senses ... The work of the director and artists of 'Lover' in the selection of texture can be considered a reference for films about South-East Asia of the pre-war period (and indeed for any retro-drama). Landscapes, extras, props, ideally inscribed in a banana-lemon, colored by the tropical sun, blown by the monsoons, covered with pollen and dust, the visual range, are sustained with a delicate taste of accompaniment that enriches and colors the content, but does not replace it anywhere, the background, on which especially Two main visual finds stand out advantageously - He and She, unnamed, but humanized, ephemeral, but emphatically bodily.

Young Jane March in frayed, translucent, flowing silks, frayed high-heeled shoes, a strange, ridiculous man's hat, with her thin elbows, ankles, slightly protruding collarbones, carmine tinted mouth, sometimes angular, sometimes flexible like a cat, sometimes childish awkward, then somehow uterine, almost dissolutely defiant - full of genuine charm of a nymphet, ingenue libertine, vicious and innocent, magnanimous and cynical at the same time. The refined, thoroughbred beauty of Tony Leung, some undoubtedly ancient, royal blood in his veins, his European, but seemingly especially fashionable and neat clothes, the Asian self-immersion of his impassive face and the mystery associated with it - seem too complicated, too pretentious facade for in order to hide behind him a banal playboy. The love scenes between them, thanks to the magnificent camera work, the amazing fantasy manifested in the change of angles and degrees of magnification (from drops of sweat on the skin - to almost Japanese general plans) - are filled with such inexplicable longing, such frantic interweaving of hope and torment, such a deathly crown sometimes that in life, it seems that only shadows remain outside the embrace of lovers ... Of course, the actors' play does not reach the artistic level of the pictorial solution. Neither March nor Leung truly go beyond their purely visual decorativeness. To a certain extent, unplayed emotions are compensated for by those clearly pronounced behind the scenes (in the voice of the great Jeanne Moreau), but the limitations and inadequacy of such a replacement are obvious. Alas. True, in fairness it is worth noting that this acting passivity of the two premieres (and some pallor, with the undoubted professionalism of the supporting actors) does not spoil the overall bittersweet impression of the film and does not destroy the magic. France leaving Indochina, saying goodbye to the distance, crying at the pier - silently and proudly, lonely - in my perception will always be like Jane March, thrusting her leg into the gap of the parapet, swallowing tears, taking away and forever leaving an insatiable heart on the overseas land pain ... 'For those who hear the call of the East, the motherland is not sweet.'