An album of coffee-table erotica in illustration of Marguerite Duras's autobiographical novel about the affair of a French schoolgirl and a well-heeled Chinese outlander in Indochina, 1929. The basic situation — forbidden love, interracial love — casts in retrospect some interesting light on Duras's seminal screenplay for Hiroshima, Mon Amour, a much more interesting light than the rose-amber one spread like body oil over the coyly posed couplings and undulating buttocks and post-coital tableaux vivants that mean to make us hold our breath till we turn blue. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud (a name synonymous with vagary: Quest for Fire, The Name of the Rose, The Bear) has some good ideas about Setting-the-Mood. The extreme closeups, almost magnifying-glass closeups — of a strand of hair, the neckline of a dress, the toe of a shoe — intrude into the heroine's Personal Space past all boundary of decorum and decency, and the actress (newcomer Jane March) looks authentically young enough to add to any qualms about it. And the preliminary stages of the affair — the touching of pinky fingers on the back seat of a car, the kiss through a rolled-up window — take ample time for a proper warm-up. And although the street noise that pours through the slatted windows and door of the Saigon love nest is not everybody's ideal background music for l'amour, it certainly enhances the sense of clandestineness and audacity. Once the affair begins in earnest, and the amber light begins to spread, the movie seems in constant danger of turning into Teenage Emmanuelle. There is just enough stuff to do with race and class to hold it back. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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