A Love That Broke Rules, Not Hearts
In the early ’90s, few films generated as much passion, controversy, and poetry as Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Lover (1992). A depiction of Marguerite Duras’ semi-autobiographical novel, the film audaciously told the story of a young French schoolgirl and a wealthy Chinese man and the love they shared in 1920s colonial Saigon. The Lover was about a great deal more than the physical. It was about the ache of intimacy recalled: the kind that hurts and never really goes away.
For its actors, Jane March and Tony Leung Ka-fai, it was more than a performance. It was a turning point that dimmed as it transformed their lives in radiant and solitary ways.
A Story of Desire and Distance
The Lover is set in French Indochina. It follows a teenage girl (Jane March) of a poor French family when she meets a refined Chinese businessman (Tony Leung). What starts as a chance meeting on a ferry develops into a romantic encounter that crosses the disparate borders of class, culture, and morality.
At fifteen, she is both fragile and firm, clad in a faded silk dress and a man’s hat — her symbols of defiance. He, on the other hand, is a traditionalist, already engaged to a woman of his father’s choosing; family honor, after all, must be respected.
The lovers meet in Secret Apartments, a modest and colonial-remote Saigon pretending to be unmarking the distance. What plays is a bittersweet symphony on the line of passion and sorrow, chains of captivity and euphoric madness. She runs him over to escape the abyss of destitution, and, he, to break the grim rigidity of the pattern. Both get hold of feelings they never intended to possess.
The lovers part in silence, and, years later, she receives a letter in which he confesses that he still loves her — these last moments are the lines that turn the story from a scandal to a tragedy of remembrance. This is a story that resonates with the touch of sorrow. It is about bitter and unfulfilled love the world built on steep hierarchies and social distance do allow.
Jane March: The Girl Who Became a Mystery
Prior to The Lover, March was a still a 17-year-old British model, discovered during a photo shoot. March would have an elite modeling career, getting published in a British magazine, and starring in campaigns. There was a lot of competition at this age, and like any young talent, she was a subject for discovery. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud saw one of her photographs and said she had “the eyes of a woman who remembers being a child, and the face of a child who has already seen too much.”
Her casting however, proved to be a heavy burden. March was so young, and at this stage in an actors career, one must focus on honing the craft, not handling the burden of extreme controversy and artistic risk. For such an intimate film, she had to carry the weight of expectation and risk, and solely for the intimate nature of the film, her international stardom was definite. The film was March’s, ‘The Lover.’
The role required a high level of emotional and physical toll. After the controversy surrounding the film, she was headed for the gossip columns, now labeled ‘The Lover Girl’- an identity that she could neither choose nor escape. Magic is too cheap a term for the trade.
Behind the delicate sensuality of her performance there was a teenager trying to maintain her sanity. It was the media storm surrounding her that almost scared her off acting, “It was supposed to be art, she said once, but it became gossip. People forgot there was pain in that love story.” Tony Leung Ka-fai: The Gentleman in Shadows Behind the delicate sensuality of her performance there was a teenager trying to maintain her sanity. It was the media storm surrounding her that almost scared her off acting, “It was supposed to be art, she said once, but it became gossip. People forgot there was pain in that love story.” Tony Leung Ka-fai: The Gentleman in Shadows Behind the delicate sensuality of her performance there was a teenager trying to maintain her sanity. It was the media storm surrounding her that almost scared her off acting, “It was supposed to be art, she said once, but it became gossip. People forgot there was pain in that love story.” Tony Leung Ka-fai: The Gentleman in Shadows
Off-screen, Leung alsohad to confront the question of identity: how a Hong Kong actor was to feature in a European art film, and how to bridge two cinematic worlds that had little understanding of each other. For him, there was the added challenge of how to suggest sensuality without becoming a caricature.
Critics noted and appreciated what he had done: giving the character a soul. While the prevailing representation around him was one of dominance, Leung made the character tender. His eyes spoke of agonizing centuries of suffering; his silence articulated what words of a dialogue could not. And in that silence, audiences from across Asia recognized their own pent-up passion, their unuttered love, and the suffocating memory that accompanied it.
The Lover: A Film That Cost More Than Just Money
Most people do not know just how difficult a film The Lover was to produce. It was shot in Vietnam and had to contend with censorship. The crew had to face exhaustion from the heat, and the cast suffered from emotional exhaustion as well.
Jean-Jacques Annaud had a reputation for being a perfectionist, taking multiple shots in order to capture every subtle flicker of emotion. He reportedly took a whole week to shoot these scenes, enduring unbearable tropical heat, while being watched by curious locals who for some reason found it interesting that we were filming a “foreign movie” and we had little movie set privacy.
Because March was underage, these were some of the most complex moral and legal situations to be in. With her parents present on set and under the watchful eye of her parents, each scene was choreographed in a way that we could film it while respecting the legal and moral filming regulations. Even after all of these attempts to make sure these things were legal and moral, there were still, and for a long time, many people, rumors, and legal issues that followed her.
The Lawer That Crossed Cultures
When The Lawer was finally released, the reviews were polar opposite. There was a great deal of controversy. Unline the critics though, many people in the world, and especially in Eurpoe and Asia understood the nuanced colonial discourse and socioeconomic commentary. The muted tones, the golden light of Saigon, the long silences, and the cadences between bated breaths were some of the best characteristics of the film.
Responses from Indian audiences were interesting in their own right. Perhaps it is because Indian society, like the society depicted in the film, understands the impact of social confines and the subtle insubordination of love that is outlawed. The film’s breathtaking and sensual yet tragic restraint resonates with the Indian understanding of love that transcends the boundaries of caste, class, and community and is embedded in the popular imagination.
Perhaps The Lover is less about France and China and more about the locations where desire is cloaked in disapprobation.
Where Memory Meets Immortality
After all these decades, The Lover still resonates, not for the controversy but for the emotional sustenance it has to offer. Jane March eventually returned to acting but never to the same level of prominence. Tony Leung continued to shine in Asian cinema, his subtle intensity becoming a hallmark.
Both, in their own ways, have carried The Lover. The film has become a tattoo of an emotional kind for them, painfully, but beautifully, marking them.
In one of the last voiceovers, the older version of the girl looks back on her life and states, “Very early in my life, it was too late.” This line, both tragic and philosophical, captures what The Lover truly is — a meditation on the deep interconnection of youth, love, and regret.
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