Portland Oregonian by Ted Mahar

Annaud shot in Vietnam, creating gorgeous, often exotic images. The compelling film is a journey to another world and time, seen from a unique and peculiar perspective. [23 Nov 1992, p.D05]

The New York Times by Vincent Canby

the film that Mr. Annaud and his producer, Claude Berri, have made is something of a triumph. It's tough, clear-eyed, utterly unsentimental, produced lavishly but with such discipline that the exotic locale never gets in the way of the minutely detailed drama at the center.

Newsweek by David Ansen

The Lover's rarefied sensibility takes getting used to; once its spell is cast, you won't want to blink.

New Orleans Times-Picayune by David Baron

Annaud's picture does an exquisite job of conveying the many-layered ironies of its material, creating a mood of odd reserve and self-reflection even as it stages the couple's trysts with both force and delicacy. [29 Jan 1993, p.L21]

Austin Chronicle by Pamela Bruce

The Lover is one of those great films that shouldn't be missed.

Chicago Tribune by Johanna Steinmetz

Erotically charged American films invariably are spiked with criminal danger. So "The Lover" - a movie about a young French girl's sexual awakening in colonial Vietnam that relies entirely on cinematic effects to evoke the sensuality of its time, place and events - is refreshing evidence that we don't need fear to trigger arousal.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Rick Groen

THE Lover is lyrical and sensuous, very pretty and strangely hollow. Deliberately hollow, I think - the flatness at the centre of this film is meant to correspond to the emptiness at the heart of its young protagonist. And the audience is supposed to fall into that void and hear its echo, feel the residual ache. Yet we don't - we're content to comprehend the theme without feeling it. Our emotions are spared, and, as a result, we watch the proceedings at a safe remove - appreciative yet detached, admiring yet unmoved. There's much to love about The Lover, but not enough to love passionately. [30 Oct 1992]

The Associated Press by Bob Thomas

Is it pornographic? Not by today's standards. It is certainly erotic, but no more so than "Basic Instinct" and other big-studio movies. The couplings of The Young Girl and The Chinese Man (their names are never disclosed) are natural and even lyrical, except for one punishing incident. [2 Nov 1992]

Boston Globe by Jay Carr

Technically, the film is as sexy as art house sex gets, as the bold and precocious girl initiates the coupling in the "bachelor's room" the man rents in Saigon's teeming Chinese quarter. But the couplings lack heat and intimacy and spontaneity in ways that have nothing to do with the man's tentativeness. What you feel as these scenes unfold isn't passion, but a sense of how carefully the bodies are being arranged, how artfully they're being lit. What we're experiencing here isn't ardor; it's up-market craftsmanship. There's much more of a sexual charge in their first scene together, when he glimpses her on a ferry, is smitten, offers her a ride in his splendid chauffeured limo, tentatively moves his hand toward hers in the back seat, takes a deep breath, touches her hand, then exhales with relief when she doesn't push his hand away. [13 Nov 1992, p.32]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold

The movie doesn't make much narrative sense and its complicated flashback structure (which assumes some knowledge of Ivens' rather obscure film career) doesn't help. But the film is so delightful to the eye that we almost don't care. Like "The Lover," sometimes the visual pleasures of a visual medium can be enough. [13 Nov 1992]

Variety

The Lover, a sophisticated adaptation of Marguerite Duras’ bestselling memoir about her love affair as a 15-year-old with a rich, older Chinese man, lacks the distinctive voice and ambiance of the book, but the abundant sex – soft-core and tasteful – and the splendid sets make up for the film’s banal style.

Chicago Reader

Duras has reportedly disowned the film, and it's not hard to sympathize with her chagrin. By stripping away the voluptuous veneer of her language and the gauze of her memory, Annaud's adaptation has reduced her artful tale to a white woman's wet dream.

Washington Post by Desson Thomson

Director Jean-Jacques Annaud and adapter Gerard Brach provide more than a few effective moments. Beyond her corporeal qualities, March is thoroughly believable. When she walks up to Leung in his car and plants a kiss on his window, her swoonish tentativeness gives the act incredible weight. 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.

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

The Lover is easy to watch and even easier to forget. A pleasant enough piece of commercial sensuality from French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, its selling point is its very pretty, clothing-optional sex scenes. Their effectiveness, however, is undercut by an air of self-congratulatory pomposity that the film is way too insubstantial to support.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Is The Lover any good as a serious film? Not really...I wanted to know more. I believe true eroticism resides in the mind; what happens between bodies is more or less the same, but what it means to the occupants of those bodies is another question.

Time Out

For all the footage of glistening flesh - most of the film takes place in a darkened room where the two explore the realm of the senses - this is basically a melancholic piece about the remembrance of times, places and passions lost (with voice-over narration by Jeanne Moreau).

Washington Post by Rita Kempley

Annaud, who wrote the adaptation with frequent collaborator Gerard Brach, showed more consideration for the cub in "The Bear" than he does for young Miss March, who is shamefully overexposed. True, Leung's bodacious, cantaloupe-colored bottom is showcased, but the only thing we miss of March's is the skin between her toes. Never mind that in portraying passion, the two seem to be demonstrating the proper use of the Salad Shooter.

Empire by William Thomas

Thankfully Annaud's stunning direction takes in the beautiful scenery allowing a mild diversion from the scenes of romance.

TV Guide Magazine

March has the requisite child-woman quality and evinces some sly humor but she, too, is stymied by the schematic screenplay. She is far more convincing as an emblem of nostalgic, adolescent eroticism than as one of France's most distinguished future writers. Small wonder, then, that Duras herself has publicly disowned this adaptation.