L’AMANT (The Lover)

In this movie, you will see Saigon before Ho Chi Minh. It is shot in a time of Vietnam where most women preferred to be prostitutes than to serve the wounded soldiers, lepers, and the cholera infested places . It appears that prostituting is giving love, a thing where many calls a profession (remember Kim in broadway). During those times, the Chinese are minority, small time peddlers in Vietnam but frequent clients for prostitutes or politically termed then as mistresses. Those who sleep with them are nasty. The story revolves around this 15 year old French girl (Jane March) and that of a rich Chinaman from Cholon ( Tony Leung) .

The narration is almost poetic weaving the life of 15 year older white girl in the eyes of an old lady. The photography is as poetic as the narration; as it reveals the beautiful angles of Mekong river that spreads to the busy port of Saigon, as it creates the different contours of a human body making love as lovely as a tree, as it makes a colorful Chinese wedding at the bank of a river like a musical performance. The dullness of the sound fits the sadness and irony that class stratification brings in an ancient city.

It is a must see movie I found in a 16 in-1 DVD with a tagline of “Lonely Nights” and within it are Malena (Monica Belluci, The Matrix ) , Karmen (Paz Vega, Spanglish) with no English translation, what do you expect in a 75 pesos though and Color of Night (Bruce Willis). If u ask me the other 12 movies or the covered pictures, well indeed it is for lonely nights.





see more reviews at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101316/