Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: 'Lover' turns affair into peep show Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 15:11:15 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE;ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT;MOVIES \HD 'Lover' turns affair into peep show \SH Coarsened film undercuts novel \BY Gary Arnold \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES Bram Stoker would no doubt have a few quarrels to pick with the new movie that presumes to call itself "Bram Stoker's Dracula." As a living writer, Marguerite Duras exercised the option of disowning the film version of her novel "The Lover" when it appeared. Indeed, her disenchantment was so keen that she decided to rewrite the book in an effort to distance it even further from the movie, entrusted to director Jean-Jacques Annaud and screenwriting collaborator Gerard Brach. This team enjoyed a considerable success in Europe, though definitely not in the United States, when transposing Umberto Eco's labyrinthine medieval whodunit "In the Name of the Rose" from page to screen. "The Lover," a far more straightforward narrative proposition, distorts Miss Duras most conspicuously by substituting a pictorial dimension for her literary voice. Even with the best of intentions, the filmmakers probably would have antagonized Miss Duras by illustrating how much evocative distortion occurs when word pictures are replaced by graphic illustration. Nominally, the voice of the author is retained in narration spoken by Jeanne Moreau, but the prevailing sensibility is Mr. Annaud's. Presumed to be autobiographical to a titillating degree, "The Lover" is a memoir of a clandestine love affair between a French colonial girl and a wealthy Chinese playboy indulging a "forbidden" passion before marrying within his race and class. The interracial aspects of the affair seem to anticipate Miss Duras' most famous screenplay, "Hiroshima, mon amour." The format recalls "Last Tango in Paris," transposed to a singularly exotic setting: Saigon at the end of the 1920s. The unnamed principals, played by British model Jane March and the Hong Kong actor Tony Leung, don't sustain as much human interest as feature length or serious pretensions require. The movie solicits a measure of pathos that the performers are far too inexperienced and lightweight to secure. They do share more than enough strenuous, naked calisthenics to guarantee the film's widespread success as a softcore conversation piece. Between the hot stuff and actual location shooting in Vietnam, Mr. Annaud has some photogenic assets to exploit. The fact that he exploits them to Miss Duras' temporary disadvantage doesn't seem exactly criminal. The film version of "The Lover" confirms Mr. Annaud as a facile, glossy hack without doing permanent harm to Miss Duras' literary reputation. In a cockamamie way, Mr. Annaud may have insulted the author by trying to flatter her literary vanity. "The Lover" leaves the impression that the heroine's sexual initiation had more significance as vocational inspiration than sheer, rapturous physical sensation. It's as if the first thing that crosses her mind at the peak of passion is, "Yes, I must write about this! And the sooner the better!" The experience gets obscured by a weirdly precocious lust to embalm it in sensitive prose. Minds work in distinctive and mysterious ways, I know, but the tone of literary reflection in "The Lover" does seem a trifle suspect. Miss Duras could evoke elusive and fugitive erotic sensations in words. Mr. Annaud's re-enactments of her erotic episodes don't lend themselves to poetic suggestion. They're the movie's conspicuous, prurient selling points. The candid sexual depiction also conflicts with the suggestion of transcendent literary reflection. Ascribing a conscious, knowing outlook on passion to an impoverished 18-year-old in the thick of her first love affair, with a man of means in his early 30s, seems extravagantly vain. Maybe she can manipulate her recollections at will, but the original sexual awakening probably owed more to her partner than he's given credit for. "The Lover" degenerates into abject sappiness when trying to work up more pathos about a fleeting affair than circumstances justify. Here, too, there's a funny sort of special pleading on the woman's behalf: It's the man who carries a lifelong torch. ***** TWO STARS TITLE: "The Lover" RATING: R (sexually explicit episodes) CREDITS: Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud; screenplay by Gerard Brach and Jean-Jacques Annaud, based on the novel by Marguerite Duras RUNNING TIME: 115 minutes MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM