Indochine is set in Vietnam in the 1920’s and 1930’s when Indochina was under the waning shadow of French colonialism. It is a beautifully photographed epic love story, richly exotic but dramatically flawed, that was nominated for two Academy Awards in 1992 -- in the Best Foreign Film and Best Actress categories. Regis Wargnier directed the film and also co-wrote the script. The film brilliantly contrasts the decadence of French colonial society, thriving off its exploitation of the subjugated Vietnamese people, with the poverty and suffering of the natives. It was an age that finally passed, but not before one trauma gave way to another.

The Story: The story concerns Eliane (Catherine Deneuve), a courageous, powerful, and attractive woman who owns and operates a profitable rubber plantation with her semi-retired father. She orders her employees around with all the command of a general. Her outer shell is hardened by a fearless demeanor. She is in full mastery of her emotions, taking pleasure only rarely, via an opium pipe or a quick affair. She lives the elegant social high-life that might be expected of a wealthy French landowner.

Eliane is unmarried but has an adoptive daughter, an Annam princess, who was the young daughter of family friends until orphaned by their sudden tragic death in a plane crash. She is now called Camille (Linh Dam Pharm). The one condition imposed by her nearest relatives before consenting to her adoption by Eliane was that she would marry her Vietnamese cousin when she came of age. Camille has been raised mostly in France, attending French Catholic schools. She is thus largely assimilated into the ways of French culture and society. In one lovely early scene, Eliane and Camille are engaged in a spirited rehearsal of the Tango that they intend to perform for guests at a get-together.

Eliane meets a handsome young French officer named Jean-Baptiste (Vincent Perez) and begins an impassioned affair. To her surprise, she discovers that this is one affair that she wants not to end too quickly, but the fickle Jean-Baptiste loses interest. By sheer coincidence [read “plot-device”], Camille meets Jean-Baptiste when he saves her life during a shootout in a busy street. She has no idea who he is, much less that he had been her mother’s lover. Recovering from her fright, she looks up at him and is immediately cast into the deepest throes of love. She is instantly convinced that this is the man that she is destined to marry. When she later confides her discovery of her soul mate to her mother, Eliane is shocked to learn that the man in question is Jean-Baptiste. Eliane, smelling potential disaster in the making, uses her considerable influence to have Jean-Baptiste immediately transferred to a remote outpost on the Tonkin Islands. Unfortunately, she has tragically underestimated Camille’s determination to have love’s way.

Seeing no alternative, Camille goes through with the prearranged marriage with her cousin, but quickly deserts him and sets off on a hazardous journey to find Jean-Baptiste or die trying. Along the way, she inadvertently discovers her people and homeland and all of the abject poverty in which they live, which contrasts starkly with the high privilege of her own former life. She is disgusted by what she sees. She travels with a family of four, sharing their desperation as they aid one another. Later, she sees them killed when they refuse to be separated during a slave labor auction. She impulsively kills one of those responsible for the death of “her family” and, virtually simultaneously, reunites with Jean-Baptiste. They flee together. They settle on a remote destination where, they believe based on legend, that there is a hidden valley. By good fortune, they get there, though near starvation.

After regaining their health, they are sent with a convoy headed for China. They have become the subject of both legend among the people and the object of a massive manhunt. Jean-Baptiste is now a deserter. While enroute, Camille gives birth to a son. From an overlook, Camille sees Jean-Baptiste and her son taken captive while they bathe in a small pool. She must stifle her impulse to scream or be captured herself. Now separated, Jean-Baptiste and the baby are taken back to Saigon where Jean-Baptiste is incarcerated and the baby turned over to his grandmother, Eliane. Camille is later captured, as well, and imprisoned with rebels in a prison described by one friend of Camille as a breeding ground for communists. Jean-Baptiste is granted one day of freedom to clean up his affairs on his word of honor that he will not try to escape. He takes the opportunity to exercise the tradition of French officers in disgrace and takes his own life.

The legend of the love between Camille and Jean-Baptiste becomes an inspiration for communist agitators, being retold and acted out by traveling puppeteers all over rural Vietnam. Camille is ultimately released from prison and becomes a leader of the Communist Party. When the French empire ultimately falls, Eliane escapes to France with her grandson, and raises him to become an educated and sophisticated young man of French society. As the story ends, Camille’s young son is fully grown, living in France, when Camille comes to Paris as part of the Vietnamese delegation negotiating terms. Eliane provides him with an opportunity to meet his mother. He goes to the hotel where the negotiations are taking place, but, decides, in the end, that it would be pointless to try to bridge a gulf as great as that separating a rebel guerilla fighter and a French student.

Strengths: What stands out most about this film is its epic scope and lovely cinematography. Indochine not only highlights the scenic splendors of southeast Asia, but also the nostalgic beauty of the French colonial atmosphere. The beautiful tropical costumes (especially Eliane’s outfits) and exotic interior sets are a sight to behold.

Next among the strong points are the performances of the three leads. Linh Dam Pham was as outstanding as her part allowed. Vincent Perez possessed all the roughish handsomeness required as Jean-Baptiste. You might recognize him from Cyrano de Bergerac or Queen Margot. Catherine Deneuve has that rare quality of ageless beauty, even if she no longer glows with quite the youthful bloom that we came to love in Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Belle de Jour. She had the tough job of carrying the weaker and less emotionally charged sections of the script. She provided all the serenity of expression that one might anticipate for the character most emblematic, in this story, of France.

Weaknesses: The script of Indochine is too slow-paced in some segments, undermining dramatic tension. It feels too long (at 152 minutes), but that might not have been the case had the excitement level been more elevated. A big part of the reason that viewers don’t get more involved in this story is a real dearth of character development. Eliane may have had little reason to change, being set in her ways and fully imbued with the righteousness of colonial destiny, but one might certainly have expected the changes in the two younger characters to be believably scripted. Jean-Baptiste, for example, goes from love-em and leave-em cad to romantic hero for no evident reason. Likewise, Camille’s transformation into zealous communist rebel takes place entirely unseen by viewers. We are even deprived of meeting the new Camille, in the end, in Paris. Maybe her son could do without meeting her, but viewers should not be required to as well!

No one will accuse the producers of this film of succumbing to politically correctness. Indochine is about as politically incorrect as a film about colonial exploitation can be. To begin with, the story is told entirely though the eurocentric perspective of Eliane, the wealthy plantation owner. She and her social circle persist throughout the story in seeing themselves as benevolent providers of culture and opportunity to the primitives. The film makes no apologies for imperialism and is thereby, in that sense, as arrogant and condescending as the characters that make up the colonial French society in the film. We get no sense, through this film, that the French have come to recognize the culpability that they attached to themselves (and that America later assumed) through the exploitation of natural resources of southeast Asia and the suppression and degradation of its people.

Apparently, Wargnier was aiming for an apolitical statement, but the subject matter of Indochine required some evidence of regret. We are shown Vietnamese natives at a slave auction being weighed and having their teeth checked like horses or cattle, being sold, separated from family members, or killed in resistance. We are also shown more routine cruelties, such as when Eliane cavalierly orders her chauffeur out of the car in a tropical downpour because she wants a quickie with Jean-Baptiste. The lush beauty of Indochine seems to pour a gloss over the cruelty of colonialism rather than illuminating it.

The epilogue for this film was starkly inconclusive and unsatisfying. Perhaps the writers were trying to suggest metaphorically that the tumultuous history of Vietnam was far from closure with the French pullout. If so, it’s a cute political foreboding, but also a rather empty conclusion to a 152 minute film.

Bottom Line: In French and Vietnamese with English subtitles, Indochine is rated PG-13, for sexuality and scenes depicting drug use. What violence occurs takes place mainly off-screen, but the afterimages are plenty disturbing enough. I have to say that I enjoyed this film despite its significant structural weaknesses. It is lovely to look at (both the cinematography and the three beautiful lead performers), the love story is compelling, and the sets and costumes successfully capture a place and an era now long gone. Accordingly, I give it a four-star rating and recommend it for those who feel that they would be attracted by those three positive attributes.

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older