Console
best movie i've ever seen.
Jonah Abbott
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
dromasca
'Indochine' was released to the big screens in France by the time of my first visit in Paris in 1992, the city was then full of posters about it, I remember them even on the Champs Elysees. Going to the movies was not my priority at my first time in that splendid city, and thus more than 20 years passed until I got to see this film, probably one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the French cinema, a tentative in the historic epic and romantic saga genre set in the final decades of the French colonial rule in Indochina. As other similar projects like 'Gone with the Wind', 'Australia', 'Cold Mountain', or 'A Passage to India', it mixes a long and tortuous romantic story with a rendition of the history from the perspective of the 'white man'. It works to a large extent. Falling empires and republics in turmoil have many similar things and a charm of their own on screen.Romance and history meet in an intrigue which is a little bit too long, and too much decorated with coincidences, but then credibility to the detail is not necessarily the principal quality we look for when reading sagas or watching saga films. The main character played by Catherine Deneuve is a rich, beautiful and independent plantation owner who raises a Vietnamese adopted daughter and tries to keep the luxurious way of colonialist life while the world around her is cracking and falling apart. Her passion for an officer younger in age turns into a family drama when this one falls in love with the adoptive daughter and in political intrigue when the two take ways apart and join the anti-French forces. Cultures and ideologies mix and conflict in the film – colonialism fights nationalism and communism, cosmopolitan French style of life clashes with the traditions and religions of this area of Asia. There are many details in the film, but I also had a feeling of lack of focus, like in a very large picture full of characters and objects, but also a little blurred. Or maybe these were only background elements for director Regis Wargnier, I cannot know. The director BTW all but disappeared after a few ambitious but not very successful movies in the 90s.There are two fabulous qualities in this film which balance all the minuses. One is Catherine Deneuve. I am in love with her until she will be 150. There are only two other actresses at the same level, radiating light, intelligence, beauty in any role they play – Ingrid Bergman and Cate Blanchet. Deneuve crosses in this film many years in the story but she stays beautiful and dignified, socially strong but emotionally vulnerable. A great role. The second exceptional quality is the cinematography, and I must mention the name of the artist in charge – Francois Catonne. The landscapes filmed in location are exquisite, so are the scenes that bring back to life the cities of Indochina of the 30s. I am not sure if after watching 'Indochine' I have really a more accurate image about how that part of the world was in the 30s of the previous century, but I surely do have a beautiful one.
Kenneth Hunter
"Indochine" is epic film-making of a kind rarely practiced any longer. To me, it brought to mind "Gone With The Wind" and the films of David Lean, but I enjoyed it far more. The film's cinematography, production design, and costumes are stunning - never forced or pretty for their own sake, but appropriate and executed with consummate craftsmanship. "Indochine" tells of the demise of French colonialism in what became Vietnam in an even-handed manner, never placing all virtue on any one side, but narrating its story through characters who are dimensional, flawed, and recognizably human; in only one case is there a character who is completely unsympathetic, and that is a bit part. It is never easy to create characters who exhibit reprehensible qualities but still keep the audience interested in and sympathetic to them; "Indochine" accomplishes this adroitly. The issues of France's colonial interest in Indochina come across in a natural, nuanced way through the actions of the large and varied cast, without it ever seeming like we're getting a history lesson. Catherine Deneuve's reputation as a somewhat chilly actress is used to good effect here, which is not to suggest that her performance is at all one-note. Of interest is the depiction of the relationship between the French, and the natives who are essentially subjugated and exploited; however, there is real affection, at times, between members of the two groups, until the forces of history take over. The story of "Indochine" has many parallels throughout history - the story of a European (or American) interest moving in on the resources of an undeveloped country and appropriating them for its own profit and to the detriment of the inhabitants of the region. Somehow it took me fifteen years to get around to seeing this film, and I was more than pleasantly surprised. The film exceeded my expectations, and I recommend it to anyone interested in intelligent, yet still entertaining, film-making.
armenian_nj
I can understand Americans' harsh criticism of this film. This movie is far from Hollywood blockbusters that wash their brains. This is a masterpiece. Who called the play of Deneuve uneven? Actually, she lost the Academy Award to Thompson just because they do not like French actresses in the Academy. Let's recall Adjani in Camille Clodelle. Another masterpiece that lost Oscar to Anglo Saxon actress. Deneuve's performance is not only the Award winning performance, it is a cosmic, universal achievement of humanity. And there are no enough expressions and words to describe the magic of this movie. Let's do not get into the details of historical inconsistencies found by some paranoic personalities. Let's watch the movie through the eyes of French and Vietnamese people and not through the judgemental eyes of some always reprimanding complaners.
writers_reign
... and there's a lot of that about because Vietnam WAS Indochina at the time this movie deals with which is primarily the 1930s. Eliane Devries (Catherine Deneuve) has both a daughter and a son yet has never given birth which is maybe a metaphor for France 'adopting' Indochina. Like Heart Of Darkness the film employs a frame-narrator in the shape of Deneuve who begins by telling her story to Camille (Linh Dan Pham) whose parents have just been killed and because they were Eliane's best friends she has adopted Camille - who comes with a dowry of her parent's land which swell the size of Eliane's rubber plantation - and both raises and loves her as her own. Devries is a chic Frenchwoman who, for reasons never satisfactorily explained, has forsaken the chic, culture and civilisation of France for a superficially beautiful yet ultimately harsh land that's not unlike the ante-bellum South without the Mississippi. When a young naval officer, Jean-Baptiste (Vincent Perez) appears on the scene the inevitable happens and May and December have their mayfly moment. Jean-Baptiste was, of course, the name of the mime artist in Les Enfants du Paradis and is well chosen given that Perez, who has all the charisma of the Black Hole of Calcutta on a bad day, might just as well be miming for all the animation he brings to his lines. Equally inevitably Camille falls in love with him and when Deneuve has him transferred to a remote outpost Camille follows him and contrives to kill one of his colleagues putting them both on the run. All this is played out against the political unrest that is always a by-product of colonialism. In turn Camille has a child by Jean-Baptiste; he is killed, she becomes something of a Vietnamese La Passionara and Deneuve winds up holding the baby and it is he, now a grown man, to whom Deneuve is narrating the story in 1954 as Indochina became Vietnam. Weighing in at two and a half hours it requires stamina but in addition to Deneuve both Jean Yanne and Dominique Blanc are on hand and against all the odds it does keep you watching.
