He takes her hand. He doesn’t kiss it; he holds it, then places it against his cheek. He is shaking. "You're so young," he murmurs. She says nothing. The ferry docks. He asks, "Do you want to go to Cholon?" Cholon is Saigon’s Chinese quarter, a labyrinth of narrow streets, opium dens, and shuttered rooms. She knows what he is asking. She says yes.
The Chinaman is crumbling. He is in love with her, a love that is destroying him. His father, a frail, ancient patriarch who controls the family fortune, demands he marry the daughter of another wealthy Chinese family—a suitable, chaste, and respectable woman. He confronts his father in a dark, ancestor-shrine-filled room. He pleads. His father, without anger, simply says, "You will not bring shame to our name. You will marry her." the lover 1992 full movie
The day of his wedding arrives. The girl watches from her family’s villa as the procession passes—firecrackers, red silk, the elaborate sedan chair carrying his bride. She feels nothing. Or so she tells herself. He takes her hand
She does take his money. In a shocking, devastating scene, the family forces the girl to let the Chinaman pay for her younger brother’s gambling debts. The elder brother, with a casual, chilling violence, reminds her of her place: she is the family’s bargaining chip, their whore. The girl silently endures, her eyes hollow. "You're so young," he murmurs
On the pier, the enormous ship’s horn blasts. The girl stands at the rail, watching the crowd of Saigon shrink into a smudge on the horizon. She is alone. She feels a strange, distant ache she cannot name.
The ship is at sea. The night is black, the ocean vast. In the darkness of her cabin, the girl hears a piano playing a nocturne—Chopin, a waltz. The music drifts across the water from the ship’s salon.
One night, she brings the Chinaman home for dinner. It is a disaster. Her brothers eye his money with contempt and greed. They eat his food, drink his wine, and then, fueled by colonial arrogance and simmering resentment, they insult him. They call him a "rich Chinaman" as if it’s a disease. He sits in silence, humiliated. The girl watches, her face a mask of ice. Later, her mother pulls her aside. "He’s not rich enough to marry a French girl," she says. "But take his money. He’s good for that."