Her brother


I just finished the book and have seen the movie twice. Does anyone think there was an incestual relationship between the girl and her brother? Just curious...the thought crossed my mind.

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I'm meaning her younger brother....not the beast of an older brother she's clearly unfortunate to have.

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I just watched the film and was wondering the same thing.

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I think the relationship between the girl and her younger brother was totally normal. They were very close, obviously loved eachother, and clung to eachother a bit more than usual, as they both seemed to fear and hate their older brother intensely. I think the way their relationship was handled in the film was very nice, and sweet. and I don't think it suggested that they were having 'intercourse.'

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Have you read the book? It implies that their relationship was incestuous. It's just an opinion, I'm not saying you are wrong, but I found all of her familial relations extremely disturbing.

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Really? I read the book a few years ago, i just don't remember. I have to read it again. However I still don't think that incest between the girl and the younger brother was implied in the film version, despite the suggestive way the two danced together in the club.

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the film only implies her lesbian relationship at the boarding school.

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I just finished reading the book, and I don't remember an allusion to an incestous relationship between the girl and her younger brother.

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"I found all of her familial relations extremely disturbing."
they were.
I don't remember the details in the book but i think it is hinted at. In any case, there's a lot of sexual tension in many of the relationship this young girl has. With her friend, her brother and the man she seduces. She has definitely a dark and precocious sexuality that reaches out to everyone she meets.

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I read the book and I think after her affair with the Chinese guy, she went and seduced her younger brother. I think years later as an adult the writer also ended up having an affair with her father. But that may have been a case of Genetic Sexual Attraction. But I think it could also just be a French thing, they seem to be the Bonobio Chimps of the human race, they pretty much have sex with all ages and all different kinds of combinations. Personally I think that this stuff happens way more than it is reported, I think the actual number of real incest in the world is something like 30 to 40 percent of the population, but not neccessarily full out sexual intercourse, but all the shades of the spectrum... I'm not including cousin on cousin action, just the immediate family type of stuff...

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I guess we must have not read the same books about the same Marguerite Duras. Young Marguerite could hardly have had a sexual relation with her father, unless he could fit himself in her crib... Marguerite was born in Vietnam, soon after her parents immigrated there, and her father fell sick almost right then, and return to France to die. She never saw him again, nor does she remember him at all, because she was a babe when he left.

Regarding her relationship with her younger brother, they were very close indeed, partly because she took to try to protect him from the tyranny of her older brother. There is of course a close relationship between the two, but in all of her writings, and other people's who were intimate with the family, there never was any hint of any improper relationship bewteen Marguerite and her brother.

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I read the North China Lover a few years back, I remembered clearly that there was one time she made love with her younger brother in the bathroom. Correct me if I am mistaken, but that's what I remembered. When I read it, I remembered being shocked.

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I agree, I think that was intentional by the filmmaker... to insinuate an incestuous relationship. I think that is why he slapped her when they returned to the room. He was watching the way she was dancing inappropriate with her brother. Also the mother apologized for how messed up her children were and the camera cut to the older brother making out but also to the girl dancing suggestively with her younger brother.

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She was very fond of her younger brother in the book, but an incestuous relationship was never eluted to. In the movie I felt like she was dancing that way to perhaps make the Chinaman jealous. Or because she was upset at how dysfunctional her family was looking. I think she felt protective of her little bro b/c her older bro was such a monster.

-Di

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I agree, I think that was intentional by the filmmaker... to insinuate an incestuous relationship. I think that is why he slapped her when they returned to the room. He was watching the way she was dancing inappropriate with her brother. Also the mother apologized for how messed up her children were and the camera cut to the older brother making out but also to the girl dancing suggestively with her younger brother.
WINNER! That's exactly what I thought, and I came here after having just finished watching the movie to see if anyone else thought the same thing. That dance scene was extremely intense, and it is definitely what triggered the slap and him screwing here like a whore after they got back to the room. I also picked up on the mother's line as well.

"Love isn't what you say or how you feel, it's what you DO". (The Last Kiss)

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I thought the same when they danced too.

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I think people are reading too much into it. I thought the girl danced suggestively with her brother to make the chinese guy jealous. If you watch her younger brother's behaviour throughout the movie, he doesn't seem to feel anything sexual for her at all. When she kissed him 'hello' upon her return to the family home, he did not look at her weirdly like the older brother did (you see the camera focussing on her bottom area when the older brother looks at her), and during the dancing scene, the seduction was all on her part and not the younger brother's.

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I read that scene as the older brother showing suspicion. She has just lost her virginity and therefore her innocence, so Im guessing that the older brother sensed that something was up from the suggestively way she walks hence the cameras focus on her behind? I think the mother also notices a change too in her daughter.

But this is just a guess?

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It could be insinuated, and that scene is curious. But no. I think the attraction was sickly there but not acted upon. The were just all inappropriate. I think the mother was in love with that oldest, demonic son. Dysfunction junction.

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I just finished reading the two books she wrote about her relationship with her chinese lover, "The lover (L'Amant)", 1984, and "The North China lover (L'Amant de la Chine du Nord)", 1991, and in "The North China lover" she states that she made love to her younger brother in the bathroom as ta86 pointed back in Jan 11 2010.

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