''Indochine'' () is a 1992 French

period drama A historical drama (also period drama, costume drama, and period piece) is a work set in a past time period, usually used in the context of film and television. Historical drama includes historical fiction and romances, adventure films, and swas ...

film set in colonial

French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, ...

during the 1930s to 1950s. It is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

ese nationalist movement. The screenplay was written by novelist Érik Orsenna, screenwriters Louis Gardel and Catherine Cohen, and director

Régis Wargnier Régis Wargnier (; born 18 April 1948) is a French film director, film producer, screenwriter and film score composer. His 1992 film ''Indochine (film), Indochine'' won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 65th Academy Awards. ...

. The film stars

Catherine Deneuve Catherine Fabienne Dorléac (born 22 October 1943), known professionally as Catherine Deneuve (, , ), is a French actress as well as an occasional singer, model, and producer, considered one of the greatest European actresses. She gained recogni ...

Vincent Pérez Vincent Perez (born 10 June 1964) is a Swiss actor, director and photographer. He played the title character, Ashe Corven, in '' The Crow: City of Angels'', and starred in ''Queen of the Damned'', playing Marius de Romanus. Some of his films in ...

Linh Dan Pham Linh Dan Pham (born ; June 20, 1974) is a Vietnamese-born French actress. Biography She was born in Saigon, South Vietnam, but moved with her family to Paris, France, a year later, just before the capture of Saigon by North Vietnamese and Vie ...

Jean Yanne Jean may refer to: People * Jean (female given name) * Jean (male given name) * Jean (surname) Fictional characters * Jean Grey, a Marvel Comics character * Jean Valjean, fictional character in novel ''Les Misérables'' and its adaptations * Jea ...

and Dominique Blanc. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the

65th Academy Awards The 65th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored films released in 1992 in the United States and took place on March 29, 1993, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles beg ...

Plot

The story is narrated by Éliane Devries, a woman born to French parents in colonial

Indochina Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...

, and is told through flashbacks. In 1930, Éliane runs her and her widowed father's large

rubber Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Thailand, Malaysia, an ...

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

with many indentured laborers, whom she casually refers to as her

coolies A coolie (also spelled koelie, kuli, khuli, khulie, cooli, cooly, or quli) is a term for a low-wage labourer, typically of South Asian or East Asian descent. The word ''coolie'' was first popularized in the 16th century by European traders acros ...

, and divides her days between her homes at the plantation and outside Saigon. She is also the adoptive mother of Camille, whose birth parents were friends of Éliane's and members of the Nguyễn dynasty. Guy Asselin, the head of the French security services in Indochina, courts Éliane, but she rejects him and raises Camille alone giving her the education of a privileged European through her teens. Éliane meets a young

French Navy The French Navy (french: Marine nationale, lit=National Navy), informally , is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the five military service branches of France. It is among the largest and most powerful naval forces in t ...

lieutenant, Jean-Baptiste Le Guen, when they bid on the same painting at an

auction An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...

. She is flustered when he challenges her publicly and surprised when he turns up at her plantation days later, searching for a boy whose sampan he set ablaze on suspicion of opium smuggling. Éliane and Jean-Baptiste begin a torrid affair. Camille meets Jean-Baptiste by chance one day when he rescues her from a terrorist attack. Believing him to have saved her life, Camille falls in love with Jean-Baptiste at first sight, while Jean-Baptiste has no inkling of Camille's relation to Éliane. When Éliane learns of Camille's love for Jean-Baptiste, she uses her connections with high-ranking Navy officials to get Jean-Baptiste transferred to

Haiphong Haiphong ( vi, Hải Phòng, ), or Hải Phòng, is a major industrial city and the third-largest in Vietnam. Hai Phong is also the center of technology, economy, culture, medicine, education, science and trade in the Red River delta. Haiphong wa ...

. Jean-Baptiste angrily confronts Éliane about his transfer during a Christmas party at her home, resulting in a heated argument where he slaps her in front of his fellow officers. For his transgression, Jean-Baptiste is sent to the notorious Dragon Islet (Hòn Rồng), a remote French military base in northern Indochina. Éliane allows Camille to become engaged to Thanh, a pro- Communist Vietnamese boy expelled as a student from France because of his support for the 1930

Yên Bái mutiny The Yên Bái mutiny ( vi, Tổng khởi-nghĩa Yên-báy, "Yên Bái general uprising") was an uprising of Vietnamese soldiers in the French colonial army on 10 February 1930 in collaboration with civilian supporters who were members of the Vi ...

. A sympathetic Thanh allows Camille to search for Jean-Baptiste up north. Camille travels on foot and eventually makes it to Dragon Islet, where she and a Vietnamese family she travels with are imprisoned alongside other laborers. When Camille comes across the sight of her traveling companions brutally tortured and murdered by French officers, she attacks a French officer and shoots him in the struggle. Jean-Baptiste defies his superiors to protect Camille in the ensuing firefight, and the two set sail and escape Dragon Islet as outlaws. After spending several days adrift in the Gulf of Tonkin, Camille and Jean-Baptiste reach land and are taken in by a Communist theater troupe, who offers the couple refuge in a secluded valley. After several months, Camille has become pregnant with Jean-Baptiste's child, but are told they must vacate the valley out of safety. Thanh, now a high-ranking Communist operative, arranges for the theater troupe to smuggle the lovers into China. Guy attempts to use operatives to quell the growing insurrections by laborers and to locate Camille and Jean-Baptiste, without success. Camille and Jean-Baptiste's story becomes a celebrated legend in tuồng performances by Vietnamese actors, earning Camille the popular nickname "the Red Princess". When the couple nears the Chinese border, Jean-Baptiste takes his and Camille's newborn son to

baptize Baptism (from grc-x-koine, βάπτισμα, váptisma) is a form of ritual purification—a characteristic of many religions throughout time and geography. In Christianity, it is a Christian sacrament of initiation and adoption, almost inv ...

him in a river while she's asleep. After christening the baby Étienne, he is ambushed and apprehended by several French soldiers. A distraught Camille evades capture and escapes with the theater troupe, while French authorities remand Jean-Baptiste to a Saigon jail and hand Étienne over to Éliane. After some days in prison, Jean-Baptiste agrees to talk if he can first see his son. The Navy, which has authority over the case and refuses to subject Jean-Baptiste to interrogation by the police, plans to court-martial Jean-Baptiste in

Brest, France Brest (; ) is a port city in the Finistère department, Brittany. Located in a sheltered bay not far from the western tip of the peninsula, and the western extremity of metropolitan France, Brest is an important harbour and the second French m ...

to avoid the public outcry that would likely arise from a trial in Indochina. Jean-Baptiste is allowed a 24-hour visitation with Étienne before being taken to France. He goes to see Éliane, who lets him stay with Étienne at her Saigon residence for the night. The next day, Éliane finds Jean-Baptiste dead in his bed with a gunshot to his temple, a gun in hand, and an unharmed Étienne. Outraged, Éliane tells Guy she suspects the police murdered him, but Guy's girlfriend tells Éliane that the Communists may have killed Jean-Baptiste to silence him. With no evidence sought for either suspicion, Jean-Baptiste's death is ruled a suicide. Camille is captured and sent to Poulo-Condor – a high security prison where visitors are not permitted and not even Éliane or Guy can help free her. After five years, the

Popular Front A popular front is "any coalition of working-class and middle-class parties", including liberal and social democratic ones, "united for the defense of democratic forms" against "a presumed Fascist assault". More generally, it is "a coalition ...

comes to power and releases all political prisoners including Camille. Éliane reunites with Camille, but she declines to return to her mother and son, choosing instead to join the Communists and fight for Vietnam's independence. Camille reasons she does not wish for her son to know the horrors she has witnessed, and tells her mother that French colonialism is drawing to an end. Taking Étienne with her, Éliane sells her plantation and leaves Indochina. In 1954, Éliane finishes telling her story to a grown Étienne. They have both come to Switzerland, where Camille is a

Vietnamese Communist Party The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), also known as the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), is the founding and sole legal party of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Founded in 1930 by Hồ Chí Minh, the CPV became the ruling party of North ...

delegate to the Geneva Conference. Étienne goes to the negotiators' hotel intending to find his birth mother, but it is so crowded with people that he is not sure how Camille can find or recognize him. He tells Éliane he sees her as his mother. As the film concludes, an epilogue notes the next day, French Indochina becomes independent from France and Vietnam is partitioned into

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north ...

and South Vietnam.

Cast

as Éliane Devries *

as Jean-Baptiste *

as Camille *

as Guy * Dominique Blanc as Yvette *Henri Marteau as Émile *Thi Hoe Tranh Huu Trieu as Mme. Minh Tam *Eric Nguyen as Thanh *Jean-Baptiste Huynh as Étienne *Carlo Brandt as Castellani * Hubert Saint-Macary as Raymond *

Andrzej Seweryn Andrzej Teodor Seweryn (born 25 April 1946) is a Polish actor and director. One of the most successful Polish theatre actors, he starred in over 50 films, mostly in Poland, France and Germany. He is also one of only three non-French actors to ...

as Hébrard *

Thibault de Montalembert Thibault Charles Marie Septime de Montalembert (born 10 February 1962) is a French theatre, film and television actor. He is perhaps best known for his roles in the television series '' The Tunnel'' (2013–2018) and '' Call My Agent!'' (2015� ...

as Charles-Henri * Như Quỳnh as Sao

Production

The film was shot mainly in Imperial City, Hue,

Ha Long Ha may refer to: Agencies and organizations * Health authority * Hells Angels Motorcycle Club * Highways Agency (now ''National Highways''), UK government body maintaining England's major roads * Homelessness Australia, peak body organisation ...

(

Ha Long Bay Ha may refer to: Agencies and organizations * Health authority * Hells Angels Motorcycle Club * Highways Agency (now ''National Highways''), UK government body maintaining England's major roads * Homelessness Australia, peak body organisation ...

) and Ninh Binh (

Phát Diệm Cathedral The Phát Diệm Cathedral ( vi, Nhà thờ chính tòa Phát Diệm, french: Cathédrale de Phat Diem) is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phát Diệm, located in Kim Sơn District of Ninh Bình Province in Vietnam. The architecture o ...

) in

. Butterworth in Malaysia was used as a substitute for Saigon and Éliane Devries' "Lang-Sai" plantation house was actually Crag Hotel in Penang, Malaysia. Some parts were filmed in

Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion The Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion is a government gazetted heritage building located on Leith Street in George Town, Penang, Malaysia. The mansion's external decorations and indigo-blue outer walls make it a very distinctive building, and it is somet ...

, in George Town, Penang, Malaysia. Principal photography began on April 8, 1991, and concluded on August 22, 1991.

Release

Box office

The film received a total of 3,198,663 cinema-goers in France, making it the 6th most attended film of the year. The film also grossed $5,603,158 in North America.

Critical reception

On review aggregator website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, ''Indochine'' holds an approval rating of 72% based on 18 reviews. Critics' reviews praised the film's photography and scenery, while citing issues with the plot and character development. Roger Ebert wrote the film "intends to be the French '''

Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind most often refers to: * ''Gone with the Wind'' (novel), a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell * ''Gone with the Wind'' (film), the 1939 adaptation of the novel Gone with the Wind may also refer to: Music * ''Gone with the Wind'' ...

'',' a story of romance and separation, told against the backdrop of a ruinous war". He continued "Indochine''' is an ambitious, gorgeous missed opportunity – too slow, too long, too composed. It is not a successful film, and yet there is so much good in it that perhaps it's worth seeing anyway…The beauty, the photography, the impact of the scenes shot on location in Vietnam, are all striking.“ Rita Kempley of ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' found the transformation of Camille from a naive, pampered innocent to Communist revolutionary to be a compelling plot line, but noted, "The trouble is we never see the fragile teenager undergo this surprising metamorphosis. Director Regis Wargnier seems far more interested in what the white folks are doing back on the plantation". She commented further, "Wargnier, who learned his craft at the elbow of Claude Chabrol, does expose the geographic splendors of Southeast Asia as well as the common sense of its people, whose sly observations lend Indochine''' both energy and levity". Of the film's metaphorical mother-daughter relationship between Éliane and her adopted Vietnamese daughter Camille, Nick Davis said “''Indochine'''s allegorical intentions actually play much better than the specific dramas enacted among its characters", adding "While Eliane-as-Establishment, Jean-Baptiste-as-Rebellious-Lower-Class-Youth, and Camille-as-Uneasy Cultural Mixture seem to follow the historical pattern of France's relationship with Indochina, their interactions only make sense to the extent they are interpreted as solely symbolic figures".

Accolades

* The film was selected for screening as part of the Cannes Classics section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Indochine 1992 films 1992 romantic drama films French historical drama films French historical romance films 1990s French-language films French romantic drama films Vietnamese-language films First Indochina War films Films about interracial romance Romantic period films Films directed by Régis Wargnier Sony Pictures Classics films Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award winners Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe winners Films featuring a Best Actress César Award-winning performance Films set in the 1930s Films set in the 1950s Films set in French Indochina Films shot in Vietnam Films shot in Malaysia Films scored by Patrick Doyle 1990s French films