Film

The Lover

Name: The Lover
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 1992
Cast: Jane March, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Frédérique Meininger, Arnaud Giovaninetti, Melvil Poupaud

A teenage French girl in 1920s Saigon enters a forbidden affair with a wealthy Chinese businessman. Adapted from Marguerite Duras's semi-autobiographical novel, it's languid, sensual, and morally complicated—less interested in romance than in desire as a tool for survival and agency. Visually sumptuous but emotionally austere.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love sensual, memory-haunted period films, where a voiceover circles back on itself and the emotional drama lives in glances and power rather than plot.

Skip it if you need a clear, propulsive plot, since this drifts through fragmented memories, and its frank sexual content, with an age-gap relationship at its centre, is hard to sit with.

What it asks of you: Slow and hazy in shape, told largely through fragments and recollection, it rewards patience with images rather than a tidy arc, and keeps its uneasy power dynamic in plain view.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

In the Mood for Love2000

Wong Kar-wai's masterpiece of longing and restraint. Two neighbours discover their spouses are having an affair, and fall in love through glances and nearness. Visual poetry about desire that cannot be consummated.

But Almost nothing happens. It's a film about atmosphere and colour rather than plot, which can feel static if you need narrative momentum.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being1988

Another adaptation of a modernist novel about a love affair that cannot quite fit into anyone's life. Intellectually alive and sensually confident, set against the Prague Spring. Juliette Binoche is extraordinary.

But Densely philosophical and often talky. If you want passion without ideas, this will feel like homework.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being poster

Senso1954

Visconti's Venetian melodrama: a married aristocrat falls for an Austrian officer during occupation. Ravishing Technicolor, forbidden politics, and a woman undone by desire. Pure cinema acting.

But The pacing is glacial. It's a film about the texture of yearning, not its resolution, and that won't work for everyone.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Lover

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Story of Adèle H.1975

Both centre a young woman's one-sided erotic obsession with a man she cannot have, and both understand passion as a force that destroys the person feeling it more than the person it's directed at.

Truffaut's film about Victor Hugo's daughter and her obsessive, unrequited love for an officer. Like The Lover, it's about desire as mental illness and social transgression. Isabelle Adjani is magnificent.

But It's ultimately bleak and doesn't resolve. Watching someone's psychology deteriorate through love is uncomfortable, which is rather the point.

Lust, Caution2007

Ang Lee's Shanghai espionage thriller with an extended, explicit love scene at its heart. A spy seduces a collaborator during Japanese occupation. Intellectually rigorous about the cost of desire and performance.

But The graphic sex scenes may feel gratuitous. Politics and eroticism don't always blend smoothly, and some find the mixture didactic.

Summer 19932017

Carla Simón's Catalan language debut: a young girl processes family loss during a summer with relatives. Intimate, elliptical, alive to how children parse adult secrets. Quietly devastating.

But Nothing is explained. If you need clarity or catharsis, the film's refusal to provide either will frustrate you.

Belle de Jour1967

Buñuel's masterpiece about a bourgeois wife who spends afternoons in a brothel, exploring the gap between her respectable life and her fantasies. Hypnotic, surreal, and psychologically precise.

But The dream logic can be opaque. Sexual content is presented matter-of-factly rather than titillatingly, which some find off-putting.

Thirst1979

Barbara Steele in Dario Argento's erotic horror film about a woman drawn into occult seduction. Visually extravagant, morally dubious, and completely unlike anything mainstream Hollywood makes.

But Italian horror pastiche with a high body count. If you're watching for nuance or feminism, you'll find neither here.

Carol2015

Todd Haynes's luminous adaptation of Highsmith's novel about two women in 1950s America falling in love across class lines. Tender, intelligent, and visually exquisite without being cold.

But Deliberately paced and emotionally restrained. The period setting and quiet register will feel slow to anyone craving urgency.

The English Patient1996

Minghella's lush, intricate war romance with multiple timelines and a relationship that unmakes both lovers. Sternly romantic and devastatingly acted, especially Fiennes and Binoche.

But Historically reviled for being overwrought and self-regarding. If you hate Oscars-bait sentimentality, this may trigger that instinct.

Mulholland Drive2001

Both are European art films obsessed with the gap between how desire feels and what it actually is; both use visual beauty as a way to estrange us from the story rather than draw us in.

Lynch's fractured Los Angeles dream-film about two women and the impossible relationship between them. Sensual, cruel, and formally daring. The most intoxicating film about desire's unreality.

But Narrative coherence disintegrates. By the second half, conventional plot is abandoned entirely for atmosphere and psychology. Some find it pretentious; others find it perfect.