The Lover, an essay by Fay L. Loomis at Spillwords.com

The Lover

The Lover

written by: Fay L. Loomis

 

I ached to see a longtime favorite movie, The Lover. The erotic film, based on Marguerite Duras’ autobiographical novel, L’Amant, was penned in 1984 when she was seventy years old, ill from alcohol and cigarette abuse.

Duras initially collaborated on the movie script, albeit contentiously, with director Jean-Jacques Annaud. Annaud severed the relationship and completed the script with Gérard Brach. They skillfully sliced the story from the willful and roiling language of the novel.

Duras dismissed the book as an airport novel, a load of shit she wrote on a drunken afternoon. She also detached herself from the movie.

Despite Duras’s bleak assessment, the book became an international bestseller and won the French prestigious literary prize, the Prix Boncour. The movie, also a success in France and the United States, received awards for music and cinematography. For example, unusual photographic angles pull us into the placid, sweeping countryside or draw us into the cloistered, yet bustling, city scenes.

The film features Jane March, a British seventeen-year-old model without acting experience. After a long search, Annaud instantly knew she was to play the female lead. Veteran actor Tony Leung Ka-fai, thirty-four, from Hong Kong, starred as the male lover.

The exquisite voice of narrator Jeanne Moreau adds a sensuous layer to the 1992 movie, Vietnam’s first film release. Shooting the love scenes was forbidden in that country, hence their filming in France.

I settled in to watch the rented film, my senses flooded with the colors, sounds, and sights of this slow-paced, languid movie.

The story unfolds in 1929 Saigon when Indochina was under French colonial rule. The lovers both live upriver. She in Sadec, in run-down quarters attached to the school where her mother is headmistress. He in Vinh Long where his father lives in a large stone manse on the river.

While the title of the movie suggests one lover, there are two seductors. He, a man of many mistresses, professes his love for her. She, on the verge of her first sexual encounter, steadfastly denies any love for him. Perhaps that’s why Duras acknowledges only one lover. They tryst for more than a year in small bachelor quarters in the Cholon District, located in a poor Chinese neighborhood. Light filters through the large shuttered openings into the dimly lit interior, inviting voyeurism.

The lovers meet when both cross the Mekong River on a ferry. She, a poor white French girl of fourteen and a half, settles on the local bus, separated from even poorer people and animals by black metal bars. He, Chinese, twenty-seven years old, is ensconced in the rear of a black limousine, a Morris Léon-Bollée. The car, described in Duras’ raw language, is funereal, big as a bedroom.

The only names we know for these two are the young girl and the Chinaman. As is Duras’ want, she often creates contrasts. In this case, anonymity juxtaposed with character detail.

Both vehicles pull onto the ferry. The boat, belching black smoke, heads toward Saigon. The young girl is returning to a boarding school. Her father is dead. Her despondent mother, who struggles to support the girl and her two brothers, is worn as threadbare as their clothing.

His mother is also deceased. The wealthy father expects his son to join the family business and fulfill a marriage contract with a Chinese woman to solidify their wealth and standing. The son, recently returned from schooling in Paris, wishes to do neither. He prefers nothing more than his Cholon bachelor quarters, purchased by his father, and the opium pipe. He insists he is not addicted, though readily admits his father is.

The young girl emerges from the bus, places her foot on the boat railing. The camera lingers on her worn cabaret shoe, a black and gold lamé evening pump, decorated with tiny diamanté flowers. The shoes are bargains, final reductions bought by her mother. The young girl insists on wearing them, as well as a man’s flat-brimmed hat. The brownish-pink fedora with a broad black ribbon hovers above her braids.

The shoes and hat make her feel whole, even though Duras tells us the shoes make her look “strangely, weirdly dressed.” Nevertheless, “the crucial ambiguity of the image lies in the hat.”

She wears a sepia threadbare silk dress, low-necked, that highlights her still childish breasts. A black leather belt, belonging to one of her brothers, hangs loosely from her hips. Her lips are overripe with dark red cherry lipstick to draw attention. And, attract money.

Our eye is drawn to the man’s foot, caressed by an expensive leather shoe, as he emerges from the car, dressed in a light tussore suit like Saigon bankers wear. He walks toward the girl and offers her a cigarette from his gold case. She declines. He offers a ride to her boarding place. She accepts.

As they journey along the road to Saigon, his hand slowly moves toward hers, their fingers entwine. It is only a matter of time before she will go to Cholon. Once there, he loses courage. She is small, underage, white. He knows that he could go to prison for this affair. Perhaps he already knows that his father will forbid him to marry the “little white whore from Sadec.” Yet, the young girl seduces, undresses him “button by button, sleeve by sleeve.”

The acting is excellent. Annaud was upfront that the love scenes be played “butt-naked,” without rehearsals. Their coupling is surprisingly natural. Duras describes their bodies as weak. However, Leung is a handsome actor with a hard body. March has a deceptive sweetness that complements her soft, yet firm body.

At the end of the movie, we once again see the young girl place her cabaret shoe on the ship railing, ready to begin her higher education in Paris. The Chinaman, tucked into his long black car, hidden alongside a building on the dock, surreptitiously watches her leave.

Duras strategically inserts touches of black throughout the story to highlight its dark elements.

In later life, the Chinaman and his wife visit Paris. He calls Duras and tells her he still loves her, never stopped, and will love her until death. She wonders if perhaps she may have loved him after all.

Why does this film mean so much to me? Rarely does one see so many elements finely drawn together in a film. Seldom does a movie hold its grace over the years.

Nevertheless, abuse saturates the story. Racism flows like blood through arteries. At the same time, the beauty of the tumultuous writing and the seductive imagery seduce us.

I had expected to be aroused by the fierce love scenes. I was not. And, I already knew the star-crossed lovers would separate.

What I felt was a sense of peace. I finally was willing to explore my first sexual encounter when I was the same age as the young girl. A moment of ecstasy, squelched by shame, that colored my life for many years.

In my eighty-seventh year, I forgive the naïve young girl—and boy—for their intricately folded thinking. I now celebrate sensuality.

Light shimmers through this flawed memoir, as it does through my life.

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