2.397 / 5.000
The Lover.
There is hardly another film about which more nonsense is spoken, where the opinions of most critics are so far off the mark, and where the behind-the-scenes disputes between Madame Duras and the director Annaud are so incomprehensible. I simply consider the film a masterpiece and by far Annaud's best film! Duras, with her then anti-racist stance in 1930s Indochina, did pioneering work by aptly describing her love in the tension between the French colonial upper class and the Vietnamese and Chinese "servants," without resorting to accusations or black-and-white portrayals. The wretchedness of the French "master race," becoming supplicants to a Chinese upstart, yet still unable to abandon their racist arrogance towards him, could not be more shamelessly exposed.
However, Duras does not fall into an ideologically anti-colonialist anti-racism, as she also criticized the internal clan structures of the Chinese of that time, with their arranged "marriage politics," which also blocked any lasting rapprochement between the two from his side.
Duras was also accused of not describing the common people enough. How could she have done that, when any contact between the French upper class and the lower classes was practically impossible? Nevertheless, her descriptions of Saigon and the Mekong region eminently deserve the title of world literature.
What many critics probably fixated on were the "sex scenes." March was almost defamed as a child pornography actress. Oh my God. For one thing, she was already of legal sexual age at 19, and they certainly weren't praying the rosary during their secret meetings.
To top it all off, Annaud and Duras started arguing behind the scenes because she felt that Annaud had trampled on the cultural value of her autobiographical novel.
"So what?" One might say that Annaud is not an auteur filmmaker with an audience size typical of an avant-garde film, perhaps only a thousand viewers. He simply had to make money, yet the explanations narrated off-screen in the original version by Jeanne Moreau are quite apt and atmospheric.
Duras should have understood that Annaud doesn't make films exclusively for Nobel laureates.
The saddest part is the final scene, in which she leaves Indochina with her family, and she sees him in the distant car, watching her. You couldn't describe unhappy love any better.
You hope until the very end for a happy ending, which never comes.
That left a lasting impression on me that I will never forget.
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