The Lover (film)

The Lover
French promotional poster
Directed by	Jean-Jacques Annaud
Produced by	Claude Berri
Screenplay by	Jean-Jacques Annaud Gérard Brach
Based on	The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Starring	Jane March Tony Leung Frédérique Meininger Arnaud Giovaninetti Melvil Poupaud Lisa Faulkner
Narrated by	Jeanne Moreau
Music by	Gabriel Yared
Cinematography	Robert Fraisse
Edited by	Noëlle Boisson
Production company	Films A2 Renn Productions Burrill Productions
Distributed by	Fox Pathé Europa (France)
Release date	22 January 1992 (1992-01-22) (France) 19 June 1992 (1992-06-19) (United Kingdom) 31 October 1992 (1992-10-31) (United States)
Running time	115 minutes
Country	France United Kingdom Vietnam
Language	English Vietnamese
Budget	US$30 million
Box office	US$31.8 million (France and United States)

The Lover (French: L'Amant) is a 1992 drama film produced by Claude Berri and directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. Based on the semi-autobiographical 1984 novel by Marguerite Duras, the film details the illicit affair between a teenage French girl and a wealthy Chinese man in 1929 French Indochina. In the screenplay written by Annaud and Gérard Brach, the 15 1/2-year-old protagonist is portrayed by actress Jane March, who turned eighteen shortly after filming began. Her lover is portrayed by actor Tony Leung Ka-fai. The film features full-frontal male and female nudity.

Production began in 1989, with filming commencing in 1991. The film made its theatrical debut on 22 January 1992, with an English release in the United Kingdom in June and in the United States in October of the same year. The film won the Motion Picture Sound Editors's 1993 Golden Reel award for "Best Sound Editing — Foreign Feature" and the 1993 César Award for Best Music Written for a Film. The film was a box office success, and received fairly positive reviews from the general audience along with mostly negative reviews from American critics. Overall, the film's performances and cinematography were generally praised.

The primary characters are known only as the Young Girl and the Chinese Man. The daughter of bitter, fearful, poverty-stricken colonials, the girl is a pretty waif who wears an old silk dress and a fedora, and paints her lips bright red when out of her mother's sight. She and her family are French, but live in Vietnam where her mother is a schoolteacher to local children. Her weak-willed mother, violent older brother, and timid younger brother live in a rural section across the river. The girl is a loner but an excellent student, who dreams of being a writer.