L’amant（情人）

True love is never easy, preaches the film, as if it were too often carelessly forgotten and thus had to be reminded repeatedly. Being repetitive, the film naturally faces challenges of being obsolete. Perhaps tears were still drawn from those who’d ever tasted the sweet and sorrow of forbidden loves, but nothing more profound was told.

I would not say the film is completely shallow, but somehow the scenes and the story fail to touch my heart. The corporeal and lustful sex certainly helps boost the box office, but in turn digress audience’s attention. The anxiety of a well-off but weak-minded man and the regret of a juvenile girl’s first love could have composed a striking affair. But their relationship seems to jump from love at first sight to some cheap mistress problem. The reactions of the girl’s friends and family were reduced to flat rage and sullenness, while the society’s class struggle and animus towards exotic love simply vanished. What’s really worse is the ending, where years later, the girl who was old then, received a call from the man saying he would always love her. How could anyone believe that two persons could remain in love with such a loose relationship?

No offense, but the film is mediocre. I was carried away, not with the story of “the Lover,” but with the story of my own—one that is perhaps more worth-telling.