INDOCHINE
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
INDOCHINE is a French movie by Regis Wargnier. It stars Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Perez, and Linh Dan Pham. Rated PG-13 for violence. In French with English subtitles.
INDOCHINE is a luscious epic set in the French Indochina of the 1930s to 1954 (when the French withdrew from Southeast Asia). The whole production is built around the legendary French star Catherine Deneuve. She plays Eliane the icy owner of rich rubber-tree plantations who has adopted an orphaned Annamese princess, Camille, played by Linh Dan Pham. The story focuses on Eliane's life as she has to deal with a changing Vietnam, starting to stir with nationalism and communism, and with a corrupted and cruel colonial establishment. Eliane sees herself as an Asian, born on her father's estates, never having been to France, but the Vietnamese see her somewhat differently. Fortunately, the story does not give us only Vietnam as seen by Eliane. For a large middle segment, Eliane recedes into the background as the story follows the travels and tribulations of Camille, whose search for personal freedom is a symbol for the parallel national experience.
The director and co-writer, Regis Wargnier, has taken on a huge territory to conquer in two and a half hours, the last twenty years of France's Indochinese empire, the personal stories of two exceptionally strong women and the young French naval officer (Vincent Perez) who figures most importantly in both their lives. As grand epic, INDOCHINE is a qualified success. Wargnier does not quite achieve a GONE WITH THE WIND or DR. ZHIVAGO. He is not working with an established literary property, for one thing, and so lacks some of the structure and direction of the Hollywood models. But even with a certain indecisiveness and wandering, INDOCHINE does manage to impress us enormously as a visual epic. Wargnier has gone out of his way to show us a Vietnam that most of us had no idea existed -- enormously varied terrains and landscapes, glimpses of traditional Vietnamese civilization, a land of power and beauty.
Then, too, Wargnier is blessed with one of the world's greatest woman stars, Catherine Deneuve. Deneuve doesn't make many movies these days that get released in the U.S. and the most recent film of any distinction I could find a reference to was SCENE OF THE CRIME (1987; directed by Andre Techine); in the Eighties she also allowed herself to appear in such dubious understakings as the vampire film THE HUNGER. Her greatest period was the Sixties, when she made some of the European modern classics: UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, BELLE DE JOUR, REPULSION, to name three. In any case, it is wonderful to see her again in a film completely worthy of her presence and one that fully exploits that pure iciness that has been fascinating her fans at least since Roman Polanski's 1965 film. She is ideal for the part of Eliane -- mature, sensuous, in control, strong, and deeply loving, deeply sad. She embodies all that the French achieved and lost in Indochina, the best and worst of colonialism.
Linh Dan Pham is fully up to her part as Eliane's adopted daughter, Camille, who begins as a 16-year-old schoolgirl, the heir apparent of her dead parents princely estates and Eliane's own kingdom of plantations and houses. We have a charming scene of mother and daughter learning the tango together. We also have Camille taking her life into her own hands and setting on on her own epic journey of self-discovery. Linh Dan Pham is a marvelous actor and an amazingly beautiful woman, the ideal co-star for Deneuve.
The third leading actor in INDOCHINE is Vincent Perez, the French naval officer whose own odyssey is fully as strange and unexpected as either of the women. Perez is a fine actor and his scenes with Linh Dan Pham are full of powerful emotions finely shaded.
I do have one rather large cavil: there is no reference to World War II anywhere in the film. It is my understanding that a Vichy administration maintained a nominal control until March, 1945, when the Japanese imprisoned the French military and ordered the three parts of Indochina to declare their independence. The chronology of events in the film is slippery and vague, except for the end. As I say this is really my only criticism.
I highly recommend INDOCHINE to you, even at full ticket price. Stunning photography, fascinating locales, high appealing stars and supporting actors, and a history that is all too unfamiliar, considering most recent events.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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