The Lover

The Lover

The Chinaman

The Mother

The Elder Brother

The Younger Brother

Helene Lagonelle

The Chinaman's Father

The French Teacher

Anne-Marie Stretter

The Driver

The Principal

The Writer (end)

The Writer (beginning)

The Young Boy

The Assistant Mistress

Narrator (French and English version) / Récitante (voice)

Liner Pianist

Anne-Marie Stretters Driver

Ferry Captain

Bus Driver

Bride

Bus Controller

Young Girls Coolie

Jane March denied that she and 'Tony Leung Ka Fai' actually made love. (March: "I never had sex with Tony on or off the set. It's as simple as that.") All the sex scenes were done with careful choreography and body doubles. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud falsely implied the sex was real to boost publicity for the film, thus the sex-crazed English tabloid press trumpeted the rumor on its front pages for days, making life so miserable for March and her family that she got physically sick and had a nervous breakdown. March then fled to the Seychelles to escape. Annaud later stated the sex was not real, "At first I was flattered people believed [the sex]. But after that... I stopped doing press in Britain. Of course they didn't have sex."

Cécile Fleury said that she was the body double of Jane March for some nude scenes of this film. But the spokesman of Renn Productions (which produced this film) said to Daily Mail that Cécile Fleury was only a stand-in for technical purposes - a common practice to spare a film's stars from tiring sessions under studio lights while scenes are set up. "This girl was only used for lighting purposes when scenes were being set up. She has not been used in the shooting at all," the Renn Productions spokesman said.

The film is based on the autobiographical novel by French author Marguerite Duras, whose youthful, real life romance with a Chinese man in colonial Vietnam caused a scandal.

Her lover smokes filtered cigarettes in 1929. They were not invented until the mid-'30s and not in common use until the 1950s.

The Elder Brother: Do you want to fight? Take care little buddy. It'd take two of you to do the job.

The Young Girl: It's me. I am always a little sad. I'm like my mother.

Narrator: Years after the war, after the marriages, the children, the divorces, the books, he had come to Paris with his wife. He had phoned her. He was intimidated; his voice trembled, and with the trembling it had found the accent of China again. He knew she'd begun writing books. He had also heard about the younger brother's death. He had been sad for her. And then he had no more to tell her. And then he told her - he had told her that it was as before, that he still loved her, that he would never stop loving her, that he would love her until his death.