Production

While adapting the Marguerite Duras novel into the film's screenplay, director Jean-Jacques Annaud and fellow writer Gérard Brach changed the age of "The Girl" from 15½ to 17, but tried to maintain the original structure and literary tone of the original novel. As with the Duras novel, none of the characters use names and are referred to in the credits as "The Girl" and "The Man". To find the actress who would play the girl, Annaud advertised in multiple cities in the United States and the United Kingdom, visited drama schools, and watched television. However, it was his wife who came upon 16-year-old British model Jane March's photograph in a teen fashion magazine and brought her to his attention.
When filming began 14 January 1991, March was two months away from turning 18.

Annaud first flew to Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City , formerly named Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam...

 in Vietnam in 1989 to view the original novel's setting, but was greatly disappointed at the state of the country. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

, he stated that the "best colonial hotel" offered "rats as big as this running through the corridors, spiders everywhere, and no air conditioning, of course. When we tried to use the sink, three drops of brown water--I presume from the Red River--came out of the faucet."
He initially decided against filming in the country, and began scouting locations in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, all countries that have been used as settings to represent Vietnam in other Western films. A year later, he returned to his original choice, feeling no other country could truly represent the "tired museum". According to Annaud and MGM studio, it was the first Western film to be shot in the country since the reunification of the country

Fall of Saigon

The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front on April 30, 1975...

 in 1975.
The government welcomed the crew, providing them with a governmental helicopter for use during filming. However, the filmmakers were required to clear all production storyboards with officials before they could be filmed, and an official remained on set at all times. All of the film's sexual scenes had to be shot in Paris as they could not be filmed on location. It took 135 days to complete filming, and due to the importation costs of shooting in Vietnam, the film cost $30 million to produce.

Release

After its completion, the film was first screened in Saigon where it was well received by the "morally minded" guests. The Lover debuted theatrically in France on 22 January 1992. Its first English release came in the United Kingdom 19 June 1992. The film was licensed for release in the United States by MGM Studios, but for its theatrical debut, it first had to get past opposition by the Motion Picture Association of America

Motion Picture Association of America

The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...

. The organization gave the original film an MPAA rating of NC-17. MGM appealed after cutting three minutes of the film. Coupled with pleas from Annaud, MGM, and a sex educator who argued that the cut version was no more illicit than the 1992 sexual thriller Basic Instinct

Basic Instinct

Basic Instinct is a 1992 erotic thriller directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Joe Eszterhas, and starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone....

, the film's rating was changed to R. It hit American theaters on 30 October 1992. The uncut version of the film was released to Region 1 DVD on 11 December 2001 with audio tracks in English and French and subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.

Reception

The film was a box office success in France taking in 626,891 admissions its opening weekend, playing in a total of 229 theaters. In total the film received a total of 3,156,124 admissions in France, becoming the seventh-highest-grossing film of the year.The Lover grossed $4,899,194 in box office receipts in the United States when given limited release to 103 theaters.
It was nominated for the 1992 Academy Award for Best Cinematography

Academy Award for Best Cinematography

The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...

and won the 1993 Motion Picture Sound Editors

Motion Picture Sound Editors

Founded in 1953, Motion Picture Sound Editors is an honorary society of motion picture sound editors. The society's goals are to educate others about and increase the recognition of the sound editors, show the artistic merit of the soundtracks, and improve the professional relationship of its...

 Golden Reel award for "Best Sound Editing — Foreign Feature".
At the 1993 César Awards in France, it was nominated for seven awards, winning in the category of "Meilleure musique écrite pour un film

César Award for Best Music Written for a Film

This is the list of winners and nominees of the César Award for Best Music Written for a Film . Before 2000, the award was called "César Award for Best Music".-1970s:...

" (lit. "Best music written for a film") for Gabriel Yared

Gabriel Yared

Gabriel Yared is a Lebanese composer, best known for his work in French and American cinema.Born in Beirut, Lebanon, his work in France included the scores for Betty Blue and Camille Claudel. He later began working on English language films, particularly those directed by Anthony Minghella...

's score.

The film received mostly negative reviews from American critics. On the aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

, it has a "freshness" rating of 33%, based on 15 critical reviews.
Vincent Canby

Vincent Canby

Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...

 of the New York Times, however, praised the film, calling it "something of a triumph" and a "tough, clear-eyed, utterly unsentimental" film that was "produced lavishly but with such discipline that the exotic locale never gets in the way of the minutely detailed drama at the center." He also complimented the performances of Tony Leung and Jane March, noting she is "wonderful" and a "nymphet beauty" in her film debut.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 of the Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

 compared the film to Emmanuelle

Emmanuelle (film)

Emmanuelle is a 1974 French softcore erotic film, directed by Just Jaeckin, and starring Sylvia Kristel. The screenplay was written by Jean-Louis Richard, based on the novel Emmanuelle: The Joys of a Woman by Emmanuelle Arsan. The music score is by Pierre Bachelet. The film was highly successful in...

 or the Playboy and Penthouse

Penthouse (magazine)

Penthouse, a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione, combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictorials that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore. Penthouse is owned by FriendFinder Network. formerly known as General Media, Inc. whose parent company was Penthouse International...

 erotic videos, "in which beautiful actors and elegant photography provide a soft-core sensuality. As an entry in that genre, The Lover is more than capable, and the movie is likely to have a long life on video as the sort of sexy entertainment that arouses but does not embarrass." He continued, "Is The Lover any good as a serious film? Not really. Annaud and his collaborators have got all of the physical details just right, but there is a failure of the imagination here; we do not sense the presence of real people behind the attractive facades of the two main actors."

Desson Howe of the Washington Post observed, "Director Jean-Jacques Annaud and adapter Gerard Brach provide more than a few effective moments . . . But the story is dramatically not that interesting. After establishing the affair and its immediate problems, Lover never quite rises to the occasion. Scratch away the steamy, evocative surface, remove Jeanne Moreau's veteran-voiced narration, and you have only art-film banalities."

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

 graded the film C, calling it "one more movie that titillates us with the prospect of taking sex seriously and then dampens our interest by taking it too seriously. Why do so many filmmakers insist on staging erotic encounters as if they were some sort of hushed religious ritual? The answer, of course, is that they're trying to dignify sex. But sex isn't dignified — it's messy and playful and abandoned. In The Lover, director Jean-Jacques Annaud gives us the sweating and writhing without the spontaneity and surprise."

In the United Kingdom, Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 noted "the nameless characters bring to mind Last Tango

Last Tango in Paris

Last Tango in Paris is a 1972 Italian romantic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci which portrays a recent American widower who takes up an anonymous sexual relationship with a young, soon-to-be-married Parisian woman...

's search for identity through passion, and there's a shade of Ai No Corridas intensity. But there is none of the substance that made those two films such landmarks of their genre, and while March and Leung are an attractive pair, the glossy look and aloof direction of the film leaves you cold."
The critic for Time Out London thought its "sombre quality dignifies an otherwise shoddily directed movie" that is "basically a melancholic piece about the remembrance of times, places and passions lost." He felt the role of the Young Girl was "altogether too complex for the inexperienced March to do more than simply embody."