Amant, L' / Lover, The

Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Year: 1992
Country: France
Cast: Jane March (as the Young Girl) and Tony Leung Ka Fai (as the China Man)
Rating: **1/2 (out of ****)

So what is your fantasy, you know what I mean, the fantasy? A strange land, a beautiful girl, a secret affair, a dark room….Sorry, am I going too far?

So here's the deal, there's rich china man (the credits mention him thus) and of course, there's a
beautiful young woman and there's the Indochina under French rule in 1920's. She is too young for him. She has a dysfunctional family and also has to return to France after school. Till now everything is as per our erotic fantasy, but Jean-Jacques Annuad wants to make this into some kind of a serious cinema, a coming-of-age movie about sexual awakening of a girl, that is enchanting, tragic and unforgettable (at least, it seems that way). Does he succeed? He could have, indeed, but he stops just when we want to know more. After some really steamy sex scenes, he suddenly wraps the things up. There is a lot of explicit sex, some really impressive close-ups. That's that. Why does he let her go if he really loves her that much? He could've used his influence, money, or at least could have tried. Why doesn't she say something if she really was romantically linked to him? Did they try to contact later? How? We get no answers. Sadly that eventually dilutes the experience for us.