Forbidden Love -- `The Lover' Lacks Body (So To Speak)

XX 1/2 "The Lover," with Jane March, Tony Leung and Frederique Meininger. Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, from a screenplay by Gerard Brach and Jean-Jacques Annaud. Based on the novel by Marguerite Duras. Harvard Exit. "R" - restricted, due to explicit sex. --------------------------------------------------------------- It's interesting to note that one of the most sensuous scenes in "The Lover" - which nearly received an NC-17 rating for its abundance of explicit lovemaking - takes place between two fully clothed people who very cautiously hold hands while riding in the back of a luxurious limousine.

There is an electricity to that moment that is almost completely missing from the actual love scenes, which, like the entire film, are artfully photographed and subtly erotic, but which ultimately add little to a character study that could have used a little more (pardon the pun) fleshing out.

Adapted from French writer Marguerite Duras' slender, best-selling 1984 novel, a semi-autobiographical memoir about her forbidden love affair as a 15-year-old with a wealthy 32-year-old Chinese man, the film has been a runaway success in France and Japan. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud ("The Bear") trimmed three minutes for its R-rated U.S. release.

The setting is French colonial Vietnam in 1929, where the girl and her lover (they are never named) first meet on a ferry crossing the muddy Mekong River to Saigon, where the girl attends French

boarding school. She (played by newcomer Jane March) is wearing a worn silk dress and a man's wide-brimmed fedora, leaning on the ferry's railing.

Watching from his limousine, he (Tony Leung) is instantly, nervously drawn to her, his attraction intensified by the cultural boundaries between them, and by resistance to his imminent pre-arranged marriage to a Chinese woman he's never met.

Their affair is almost entirely physical, and the film's first third consists mainly of their lovemaking in the man's "bachelor room" in the Chinese district of Cholon. "The Lover" then branches out to partially explore the girl's troubled relationship with her mother (Frederique Meininger) and two older brothers, and their embittered reaction to the hidden affair.

With its interwoven memories and reflections of the distant past, Duras' novel poses a challenge to any film adaptation; so much of its substance is internal, intuitive and suggested through emotions that don't easily translate into visual terms. Though very sensual, the book is more literate than overtly erotic (which is perhaps why the author has openly criticized the film), and Duras' adult perspective - supplied in the film through whiskey-voiced narration by Jeanne Moreau - plays a major role in the shape and impact of the memories.

Annaud and co-writer Gerard Brach have understandably focused on the affair itself, but at the expense of a deeper understanding of these passionate but agonized lovers, who realize too late the depth of their connection. The girl's family - integral to the novel - remain largely peripheral, as do the cultural dynamics which render the affair scandalously taboo.

With her woman's body and girl's looks (with subtly Asian features, it's as if she's been transformed by her environment), March is physically suited for the part, but as an inexperienced actress she is clearly out of her depth in a role that demands jaded wisdom and the ability to express it. Popular Hong Kong actor Leung gives a fuller, more thoughtful performance, but his character retains a certain reptilian unattractiveness.

The film is far more effective as a beautifully vivid evocation of its place and time. Filmed in Vietnam, the $22 million production lavishly captures the physical essence of Duras' memoir, and on purely visual terms it's one of the classiest films of the year. "The Lover" may have a powerful effect on some viewers, even if it sometimes seems like an unsolved puzzle of the heart.