The lover duras wiki series#

The lover duras wiki series#

A Freudian reading of this awakening and the series of events that it triggers can collectively be understood as the tussle between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, wherein by seeking the pleasure principle, the young woman overcomes the reality principle, and as a result endangers her position in the society.ДЄlso read: No Female Agency In The Female Orgasm. The meeting with the Chinaman initiates her sexual awakening. The Lover gives much agency to the young girl вЂ“ she is aware of the sexual power that she exudes, and she is вЂused toвЂ™ being seen by the people. The film subverts the popular androcentric fantasies вЂ“ the body of the Chinaman is eroticised as much as the Young Girl It is this meeting that triggers the action in the film and forms the core of it вЂ“ the Chinaman and the young girl embark upon a scandalous sexual affair вЂ“ I refrain from using love because of the highly pronounced power relations between the two, an absence of genuine expression of vocal feeling by the young girl, and the presence of an obvious pursuit of carnal desires. He is anxious about making any move, so much so that his hand trembles when he offers a cigarette to the young girl. She is approached by the Chinaman, who is suavely dressed, but because he occupies a liminal space вЂ“ he is not French, and neither is he a native. She is gazed upon by the Chinaman who sits in his limousine, and for the same effect cinematographically, there are close shots of her body, her skin, her manвЂ™s hat, her dress, and her shoes which contain some remaining vestige of her former French grandeur. The young girl meets the вЂChinamanвЂ™ when she is just fifteen and a half years of age, and is crossing the river on a ferry to her boarding school at Saigon. There is rarely a happy moment enjoyed by the family, their days punctuated by acts of violence committed by the tyrannous older brother, and the helplessness of the mother. The family sustains itself through their French school for the local children, and evidently on their status as the colonial masters, however, ragged their condition be.

Although French, the protagonist and her family comprising of her mother, an opium addict older brother, Pierre and a timid younger brother, Paulo have difficulties in making their ends meet. Set in a French colony in Indochina, the film is narrated in retrospect by the protagonist who is given no name, and is only referred to as the вЂyoung girlвЂ™. The Lover is based on the novel of the same name, and the novel reads as a supposedly autobiographical account of the authoress Marguerite Duras. The narrator begins, вЂњVery early in my life, it was already lateвЂ¦This ageing was brutal, this ageing I saw it spread over my features one by oneвЂ¦вЂќ The narrator compares her face to a book, and it is in creating this likeness, that the narrator extends the metaphor of the body as a text to be read and, to be consumed. The Lover begins with a lamentation, one that alludes to the waning of beauty, not as a work of nature but circumstances and inability to keep up with the temporal pace.