The Sea Wall

The monsoon (sultry heat and thunderous rain) is perfect weather to watch this 2009 movie that will inevitably trigger memories of the controversial 1992 film The Lover (Jane March and Tony Leung). The Sea Wall has a French girl with an ambiguous affair with a worldly older man in 1920s French Indo-China (this period and place is my favourite, especially when done well - which it isn't really here); it is also based on a Marguerite Duras novel - a different yet similarly autobiographical book about the same period in the author's life. The emphasis here is on Duras's mother, played with typical impassivity by the wonderful Isabelle Huppert. Don't you love her? Can you imagine Ms Huppert as a rice farmer in Siem Reap who has made an unwise investment in land continually flooded because of breaches in the overwhelmingly symbolic sea wall? A wealthy Chinese man is infatuated with her 16 year old daughter Suzanne (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey, gorgeous and seemingly straight out of an issue of Vogue Paris). This alliance would save their lives, yet Suzanne's mother and 19 year old brother (a smouldering performance seemingly based on the young Marlon Brando part in A Streetcar Named Desire from the deliciously shirtless Gaspard Ulliel), are nettled and humiliated by the prospect. There's a whiff of incest, and there's racial anger and resentment, and set against a never-convincing Cambodian revolt against French rule, the movie is not at all subtle, and pure clunky in parts. The beautiful leads all give watchable performances, however, and the wisps of atmosphere provide a nice escape. Directed by Rithy Panh.