Reviews

"The way to a woman's heart is through a poem".....so it seemed in this visually stunning cinematic experience.

One eventful day, Zhou Yu a pretty painter from Sanming embarked on a train for trip. She chanced upon a handsome but shy aspiring poet, Chen Ching. He captivated her and soon captured her heart with his poem personifying her natural beauty and comparing it to that a celestial lake.

Soon they fell in love and began their twice weekly passionate affair while commuting to the city of Chongyang. But a fellow commuter named simply as Zhang Qiang, a veterinarian came in between the two lovebirds, with a secret amorous agenda of his own for Zhou Yu.

But this is more than just a love triangle!

A new woman named Xiu came into the scene. She looked exactly like Zhou Yu. But the scene took on a different era; a different time period. She was reading the book, "Zhou Yu's Train".

Is Zhou Yu a real person? Is Zhou Yu really was Xiu? Or is Zhou Yu a figment of Xiu's romantic imagination?

Be prepared for this surreal, non-linear movie experience.

Barely 18 years old, Fanny Ebner, the young and very beautiful daughter of an Austrian police officer, encountered a visiting debonair police cadet, Ma Yun-long from China. Their initial casual friendship blossomed into a life-long love affair!

She had to overcome her family objections and even against her best friend's advice. Fanny single-mindedly embark on a long precarious journey to China to be with her beloved Yun-long. Fanny and Yun-long were married in a church during an air raid on the city!

But they survived the air raid. Their love for each other survived the poverty, the hardship, the daily struggles of family life with their children and the political and cultural upheavals in China.

Their love affair survived against all odds......

This real life love affair of Du Chengrong and Gertrude Wagner, was an intense, engrossing and passionate conjugal love relationship between a Chinese man and a Caucasian woman that spanned more than half a century. This is an unassuming love story that transcended the cross-cultural barrier and triumphed over personal hardships and struggles. It was a love affair that survived the vicissitudes of living together as husband and wife in China during the World War 2 and China's political and cultural upheavals.

Her beloved husband, Chengrong passed away in 1990. At 86 years old, Gertrude had promised to attend the Shanghai premiere of this movie.....but barely two before the premiere, Gertrude passed away......leaving behind their legacy of a conjugal love that survives and triumphs against all odds.

Oohoowow, this is one of the best love story i have the priviledge to watch and one of the best movie ever produced.

It is erotic, passionate, sensuous, sensitive, stunning, zesty, reflective, cinematographic, haunting and a very tragic love story.

The movie is based on the semi-autobiography of one of the most famous French author, Marguerite Duras who passed away in 1996.

I certainly disagree with several critics who did not hesitate to label the motion picture as "nothing more than a soft-porn." This is pretty obvious to me that the critics are unaware of or have ignored the story behind the story and the message the author and the film director are trying to convey.

Just because this movie contains scenes that are erotic with nudity, and passionate, it does not mean that the film is pornographic. Critics need to be aware of this fallacy. Moreover, critics have ignored the historical background of life in French-ruled Vietnam and the general French attitude towards the Vietnamese and the Chinese in the 1920s and 1930s.

To paraphrase another fan of this movie, who reasoned that, if this film is a porn, it would not has been nominated for an Oscar and won an award from the mainstream French Cinema. I would add: it would be totally ignored by

them.

One of my favourite erotic scenes in the movie was when the girl gradually and teasingly, pursed her lips on the glass window of the limousine for her lover.

Another favourite of mine is: the scene in the limo, showing Jane and Tony slowly and hesitatingly held hands together without looking at each other.

The camera works that captured these two moments were extremely well done. These two scenes were so erotic, my heart nearly skips a beat. To do justice to this movie, one really needs to watch it, to believe what I have just described here.

The Story: This is a movie about a teenage girl who was physically and emotionally abused by her mother and elder brother. She felt unable to control her predicament.

She sought solace and control through her passionate affair with a wealthy Chinese man (actor Tony Leung) from Cholon.

The affair is tragic from the beginning because of the cross-cultural conflict experienced by the two lovebirds.

On one hand, there was the French social restrictions about relationships with the "inferior" race of Vietnamese and the Chinese. On the other hand, it was about the Chinese tradition of arranged marriages.

The question is: Did she eventually love him?

Here are the words of Duras: "Among all the other nights upon nights, the girl had spent that one on the boat....when it happened, the burst of Chopin.... There wasn't a breath of wind and the music spread all over the dark boat, like a heavenly injunction whose import was unknown, like an order from God whose meaning was inscrutable. And the girl started up as if to go and kill herself in her turn, throw herself in her turn into the sea, and afterwards, she wept because she thought of the man from Cholon and suddenly she wasn't sure she hadn't loved him with a love she hadn't seen because it had lost itself in the affair like water in (the) sand and she rediscovered it only now, through this moment of music......"

By the way, the Chopin music did played in the movie.

Review by MovieManiac1991