SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

elianne basset This film is my favorite. It shows how a Chinese man in his thirties falls in love with a 15-year-old girl. Although she is not conscious of the love she feels for him because of the social pressure she has to face, young Marguerite Duras (the film is based on her autobiography)completely abandons herself to the man and discovers true love. To me, the way the film was shot is quite poetic, even artistic. Far from conventions, The Lover is an immersion in colonial Asia. You can smell,ear,taste and touch what the characters are experiencing: something unique that even time can't erase.

johnodq Went to see this in the cinema, at the time all the press was raving about it and "the sinner from Pinner".I sat through the whole film waiting for something interesting to happen, NOTHING happened.10 minutes in people were walking out of the theatre, 20 minutes in and my girlfriend and at least half of the rest of the audience were snoring.Having seen the original Emmanuelle (1974) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071464/ in the cinema (at a much younger age) and all the comparisons to it I thought this would at least be mildly entertaining but this is one of those films that has you thinking to yourself "I want the time I wasted watching that crap back!" If you are considering watching this then also consider watching some paint dry or contemplating ditch water as you will find it more soothing and satisfying than this pap.

jonathanruano French director Jean-Jacque Annaud does brilliantly with films about animals ("The Bear") and cavemen ("Quest for Fire"), but falls flat with this erotic movie called, "The Lover," which is about a teenage white girl (Jane March) having a forbidden affair with a wealthy Chinese man (Tony Leung)in 1929 French Indochina. This movie's downfall is its lack of eroticism. We never get a sense that the white girl and the Chinese gentleman are really attracted to each other (to say nothing about being in love with each other). As a result, this film has some steamy foreplay and soft-core sex scenes, but after they end, we feel empty and bored for the remaining hour of this film (compare that to Louis Malle's "Damage" (1992) where Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche's character seem irresistibly drawn to each other and you will notice a huge difference). The sub-plot about prejudices against the Chinese comes across as a cynical (and ineffective) hedge for a film that has nothing else to offer apart from its sex scenes.

rajah524-3 I think I was about 23 -- freshly returned from Vietnam -- when it began to dawn on me that the culture that includes most Americans is horribly crippled.(At our best, we seem trapped in a fog of bewilderment. At our worst, we are certain we know what is best for everyone. Yet we dine on a steady diet of "love" the French would swear was "rage.") I came back from what had become quite normal to me to the place I'd grown up, and found it anything -but- normal. That sense of disconnection only lasted for a time. I wasn't conscious enough then to recognize that the undoing of my disenchantment was simply a matter of becoming a part of that crippled culture again.But when I see films like this, like Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor," like Wertmuller's "Swept Away," like Fontaine's "Nathalie," I know once again what it is like to know what I really -feel- about life. I know who and what I am for a bit. I am re-engaged with what matters.