From: frankm@microsoft.com (Frank R.A.J. Maloney)
Subject: REVIEW: INDOCHINE
Reply-To: frankm@microsoft.com (Frank R.A.J. Maloney)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 15:19:01 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Summary: r.a.m.r. #01657
Keywords: author=Maloney

				  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
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews