That first afternoon he offers to give her a ride back to Saigon, so that she can escape the bus she had been riding. She accepts. They scarcely speak in the car during the drive, but their hands touch. She looks out the window, away from him. He looks out the other window. The next day he waits in his limousine in the street by her school. When she comes out, she walks directly to the car and they go to the room in the Chinese quarter. That is the beginning.

Though "The Lover" hasn't much time to characterize the girl's family, enough is sketched in to give a sense of what her mother and brothers are like. They are poverty-stricken, loveless colonials living frugally in a society in which they're supposed to be dominant, at the top of the heap. On a rare day they seem to enjoy each other. Mostly they are bitter and fearful. This is what the girl means to escape.

In the room in the Chinese quarter she is tender to the man when they make love. Afterward she might say without emotion that she doesn't much like Chinese. He retaliates. He tells her that he couldn't even marry her now if he wanted to: she's no longer a virgin.

He sometimes takes her out to expensive dinners with her mother and brothers, who gorge themselves on food, get drunk and never speak to him. They accept the relationship because the man gives the girl money. The fact that she might be in love with him never enters their minds. He is, after all, Chinese.

From the beginning of the affair both the girl and the man have known it was not to last. She is due to go back to Paris. He is betrothed to a proper Chinese girl. The awareness of the limited duration of their relationship has seemed to relieve them of any responsibilities, to have guaranteed them against awkward commitments. Yet the end is not what either expected.

Mr. Annaud demonstrates real authority in his treatment of this material. The film stays within its prescribed bounds. It is so beautifully controlled that even the love scenes, though steamily photographed, have a kind of innocence about them. Like the girl, the film has a way of standing just a little outside everything it sees, considering, recording the details, reserving judgment. The final effect is unexpectedly sad, but in a way that has nothing to do with pity.