The Lover

Let me also say, I am fifteen and a half years old. It is on a ferry over the Mekong River. Thus begins Marguerite Duras' stripped-down and suggestive tale of the passionate love affair between the fifteen-year-old French girl and her Chinese lover. On the ferry over the Mekong River, the girl meets a young Chinese man from the wealthy upper class, and she continues the journey in his limousine. This marks the beginning of a relationship, consuming in its erotic heat and intensity but at the same time doomed to be stifled by strict traditions and racial prejudices. Every day, the lover's chauffeur waits for her outside the school to drive her to a bachelor apartment in Saigon where they can indulge in the love that the surroundings condemn: his father has other plans for him, and her family belongs to the colonial class.