Let's get this right out of the way... yes, the sex is explicit. Guys, if you're looking for a movie with sex that you can get your girlfriend to watch, go find the unrated version. It's well done and doesn't have cheesey porn music.
That being said, there are other interesting points to the movie. The characters are perhaps one dimensional, but let's be honest - so are a lot of people out there. I don't understand why moviemakers are so often blasted for portraying people who aren't layer upon layer of insight and revelation. Real life is often not like that anyway.
These are good renditions of people trapped by convention and culture. The Chinaman is an outsider, socially unacceptable, who won't step outside the customs that bind him. If he follows his heart, he will lose everything. So he doesn't. The Girl is much the same. When she is alone with her lover she drops the pretense that her milieu demands. But when she is with her family, he is just another man with a skin colour not her own, and she ignores him. With a little encouragement from her, her lover might have dared to step outside custom. But she was seduced by a rich, mysterious, older man and does not want what would come after if they did decide to defy everyone. She's already poor and sad; she doesn't want more of that life. After their affair is over, she experiences regret, but not because she misses what their life would have been, but because she misses the excitement in her sad life.
At the end, you see how it really was: years later, he phones and says how he will always love her. He was, in truth, her lover. But as the narrator stresses in the opening, she had been fifteen and a half. This was not a story about two lovers, but the one. How many fifteen and a half year old girls do you know who are capable of mature unselfish love, the kind that demands real sacrifice? That's right, not too many. Real love between these two was never in the cards; while one partner may have been capable of it, the other was not.
As far as story goes, there's not much. It's pretty basic, but great movies can be built on other things too. It's a beautiful film, as well. But the one biggest problem is the sex. It was done too well for a movie that didn't have much to put in the spots where there was no sex. The sex is hot. Then she goes back to school. Or home. Yawn. I kept expecting that maybe someone would do something in protest of her behaviour... her drug addict brother or her mother maybe. Or maybe the younger brother might shoot somebody... something!! But nothing. Blah.
All in all, very nice to look at, but pretty empty, and very uneven.
That being said, there are other interesting points to the movie. The characters are perhaps one dimensional, but let's be honest - so are a lot of people out there. I don't understand why moviemakers are so often blasted for portraying people who aren't layer upon layer of insight and revelation. Real life is often not like that anyway.
These are good renditions of people trapped by convention and culture. The Chinaman is an outsider, socially unacceptable, who won't step outside the customs that bind him. If he follows his heart, he will lose everything. So he doesn't. The Girl is much the same. When she is alone with her lover she drops the pretense that her milieu demands. But when she is with her family, he is just another man with a skin colour not her own, and she ignores him. With a little encouragement from her, her lover might have dared to step outside custom. But she was seduced by a rich, mysterious, older man and does not want what would come after if they did decide to defy everyone. She's already poor and sad; she doesn't want more of that life. After their affair is over, she experiences regret, but not because she misses what their life would have been, but because she misses the excitement in her sad life.
At the end, you see how it really was: years later, he phones and says how he will always love her. He was, in truth, her lover. But as the narrator stresses in the opening, she had been fifteen and a half. This was not a story about two lovers, but the one. How many fifteen and a half year old girls do you know who are capable of mature unselfish love, the kind that demands real sacrifice? That's right, not too many. Real love between these two was never in the cards; while one partner may have been capable of it, the other was not.
As far as story goes, there's not much. It's pretty basic, but great movies can be built on other things too. It's a beautiful film, as well. But the one biggest problem is the sex. It was done too well for a movie that didn't have much to put in the spots where there was no sex. The sex is hot. Then she goes back to school. Or home. Yawn. I kept expecting that maybe someone would do something in protest of her behaviour... her drug addict brother or her mother maybe. Or maybe the younger brother might shoot somebody... something!! But nothing. Blah.
All in all, very nice to look at, but pretty empty, and very uneven.