the lover
Heart-shaped cakes and a repost from 13 years ago
It’s Valentine’s Day! We will be indulging in cake from Coco’s tonight. We got the vanilla bean / key lime curd / blackberry buttercream cake because our son would probably not like the pink champagne cake (my first choice, but I am never picky about cake).
Recently I was chatting with my pal Saelan who runs Minor Canon because he dared to tantalize me/us with a new Marguerite Duras’ The Lover hat (I have so many hats but in a moment of weakness last week, I ordered it in the very hot and lurid pink and black variant, and it arrived right in time for Valentine’s Day). I remembered that I had blogged about the movie verion of The Lover (1992) many years ago, so I dug up the post, which was from April of 2011. Of course, the text makes me want to die a little bit (as is always the case, and which will be the case when I look back here), and I cannot believe that I didn’t love the book the first time around as I have been revisiting it for the third or fourth time and I do absolutely adore it. I love that it was published when Duras was 70, looking back at her youth, at a moment in time in a fascinating life. The first time I read it I would have been 19 or 20—possibly all I wanted to read at that time was medieval literature. Maybe Duras is best read with more life experience. It’s a deeply rich novel that touches on colonialism, race, class, and age, and her burgeoning desire to write.
I tell him to come over to me, tell him he must possess me again. He comes over. He smells pleasantly of English cigarettes, expensive perfume, honey, his skin has taken on the scent of silk, the fruity smell of silk tussore, the smell of gold, he’s desirable. I tell him of this desire. He tells me to wait awhile. Talks to me, says he knew right away, when we were crossing the river, that I’d be like this after my first lover, that I’d love love, he says he knows now I’ll deceive him and deceive all the men I’m ever with. He says as for him he’s been the cause of his own unhappiness. I’m pleased with all he’s foretold, and say so. He becomes rough, desperate, he throws himself on me, devours the childish breasts, shouts, insults. I close my eyes on the intense pleasure. I think, He’s used to it, this is his occupation in life, love, nothing else. His hands are expert, marvelous, perfect. I’m very lucky, obviously, it’s as if it were his profession, as if unwittingly he knew exactly what to do and what to say.
Damn.
Reading the text below, though brief, is also pretty fascinating to me. I was absolutely obsessed with LOVER at that time, as were many of us, and I’m sure the movie was part of their inspiration boards. I remember tracking down a straw boater hat on Etsy but never wearing it out of the house. I thought it could be fun to revisit that post for the screenshots, so here it is in full (I made a few small edits to remove broken links, etc). Also I love a movie that plods, let’s be real.
The Lover, April 22, 2011
This is the first time I've taken screenshots from a movie, but I felt compelled to do it because it's such a visually beautiful one. The Lover came out in 1992, when I was 13, and I vaguely recall that there was a bit of a fuss around it because it was pretty sexy for a movie starring an 18 year old (the exquisite Jane March, who was apparently dogged by rumours about the erotic scenes in the movie; she stars along with Tony Leung Ka-fai). I read the book by Marguerite Duras a few years later, assuming that since it was a French autobiographical novel written by a woman and set in Vietnam, it would be the kind of thing for which I am a complete sucker. I read it on a train ride and I mostly remember feeling bored and and apathetic towards it (I will probably revisit it soon since it's always fascinating to me to see if and how my taste can change).
I recently realized that The Lover is on Netflix, so I watched it again. Through moments of tenderness the movie plods on onto unrequited anti-climax, which is how things tend to go in life, really, but over the years since I watched it the first time, the images have come back to me. The hat, the shoes, her braids, the silk slip dress.
Happy Valentine’s Day <3!