The film is based on the autobiographical novel by French author Marguerite Duras, whose youthful, real life romance with a Chinese man in colonial Vietnam caused a scandal.
Jane March plays a European teenager who causes a scandal for having an affair with a Chinese man in Vietnam. In real life, March is of partial Chinese and Vietnamese descent.
Jane March denied that she and Tony Ka Fai Leung actually made love. (March: "I never had sex with Tony on or off the set. It's as simple as that.") All the sex scenes were done with careful choreography and body doubles. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud falsely implied the sex was real to boost publicity for the film, thus the sex-crazed English tabloid press trumpeted the rumor on its front pages for days, making life so miserable for March and her family that she got physically sick and had a nervous breakdown. March then fled to the Seychelles to escape. Annaud later stated the sex was not real, "At first I was flattered people believed [the sex]. But after that... I stopped doing press in Britain. Of course they didn't have sex."
This film did surprisely well in the United States home video market; according to Video Store Magazine, this film earned 113.2% return on investment (ROI) in its first 120 days of home video release.