Indochine(film)
Indochine | |
---|---|
![]() French theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Régis Wargnier |
Written by | Érik Orsenna Louis Gardel Catherine Cohen Régis Wargnier |
Produced by | Eric Heumann Jean Labadie |
Starring | Catherine Deneuve Vincent Pérez Linh Dan Pham Jean Yanne |
Cinematography | François Catonné |
Edited by | Agnès Schwab Geneviève Winding |
Music by | Patrick Doyle |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | BAC Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 159 minutes |
Country | France |
Languages | French Vietnamese |
Box office | $29.6 million[1] |
Indochine(French pronunciation:[ɛ̃dɔʃin]) is a 1992 Frenchperiod dramafilm set in colonialFrench Indochinaduring the 1930s to 1950s. It is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adoptedVietnamesedaughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the risingVietnamesenationalist movement. The screenplay was written by novelistÉrik Orsenna,screenwritersLouis Gardeland Catherine Cohen, and directorRégis Wargnier.The film starsCatherine Deneuve,Vincent Pérez,Linh Dan Pham,Jean YanneandDominique Blanc.The film won theAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language Filmat the65th Academy Awards,and Deneuve was nominated forBest Actress.[2]
Plot
[edit]In 1930, Éliane Devries, someone born to French parents in colonialIndochina,runs her and her widowed father'srubberplantationwith indentured laborers and divides her days between her homes there and outsideSaigon.She is also the adoptive mother of Camille, whose birth parents were friends of Éliane's and members of theNguyễn dynasty.Guy Asselin, the head of the French security services in Indochina, courts Éliane, who rejects him and raises Camille alone giving her the education of a privileged European through her teens.
Éliane meets youngFrench Navylieutenant Jean-Baptiste Le Guen when they bid on the same painting at anauction.He challenges her publicly and turns up at her plantation days later, searching for a boy whosesampanhe set ablaze on suspicion ofopiumsmuggling. Éliane and Jean-Baptiste begin an affair.
Camille meets Jean-Baptiste by chance one day when he rescues her from a prisoner escape attempt resulting from her being bloodied and knocked unconscious. Believing him to have saved her life, Camille falls in love with Jean-Baptiste, who has no inkling of Camille's relation to Éliane. After learning of Camille's love for Jean-Baptiste, Éliane uses her connections with high-ranking Navy officials to get him transferred toHaiphong.Jean-Baptiste confronts Éliane about this during a Christmas party, resulting in an argument where he slaps her in front of his fellow officers. For his transgression, Jean-Baptiste is sent toDragon Islet(Hòn Rồng), a remote French military base in northern Indochina.
Éliane allows Camille to become engaged to Thanh, a pro-CommunistVietnamese boy expelled as a student from France because of his support for the 1930Yên Bái mutiny.A sympathetic Thanh allows Camille to search for Jean-Baptiste up north. Traveling on foot, Camille reaches Dragon Islet and is imprisoned along with a Vietnamese family she travels with and other laborers. After seeing her traveling companions tortured and murdered by French officers, she attacks an officer and shoots him in the struggle. Jean-Baptiste defies his superiors to protect Camille in the ensuing firefight, and the two escape Dragon Islet.
After spending days adrift in theGulf of Tonkin,Camille and Jean-Baptiste reach land and are taken in by a Communist theater troupe, who offers them refuge in a secluded valley. Months later, Camille is pregnant with Jean-Baptiste's child, but they must vacate the valley out of safety. Thanh, now a high-ranking Communist operative, arranges for the 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 legend intuồngperformances by Vietnamese actors, earning Camille the popular nickname "the Red Princess". When the couple nears the Chinese border, Jean-Baptiste takes his newborn son tobaptizehim in a river while Camille sleeps. After christening the baby Étienne, he is ambushed and apprehended by French soldiers. Camille evades capture and escapes with the troupe, while Jean-Baptiste is remanded to a Saigon jail and Étienne is handed over to Éliane.
After some days in prison, Jean-Baptiste agrees to talk if he can first see Étienne. The Navy, which has authority over the case and refuses to subject Jean-Baptiste to interrogation by the police, plans to court-martial him inBrest, Franceto avoid the public outcry that would 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 suspects that the police murdered him, but Guy's girlfriend says that the Communists may have done it to silence Jean-Baptiste. With no evidence sought for either suspicion, Jean-Baptiste's death is ruled a suicide. Camille is captured and sent toPoulo-Condor– a high security prison where visitors are not permitted. After five years, thePopular Frontcomes to power and releases all political prisoners including Camille. Éliane reunites with Camille, who declines to return to her mother and son, choosing instead to join the Communists andfight for Vietnam's independence.Camille does not wish for Étienne to know the horrors she 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 tells her story to a grown Étienne. They have come toSwitzerland,where Camille is aVietnamese Communist Partydelegate to theGeneva Conference.Étienne goes to the negotiators' hotel intending to find Camille, but it is so crowded that he is not sure how she can find or recognize him. He tells Éliane that he sees her as his mother. The next day, French Indochina becomes independent from France andVietnam is partitionedintoNorthandSouth Vietnam.
Cast
[edit]- Catherine Deneuveas Éliane Devries
- Vincent Pérezas Jean-Baptiste
- Linh Dan Phamas Camille
- Jean Yanneas Guy
- Dominique Blancas Yvette
- Henri Marteau as Émile
- Kieu Chinhas Mme. Minh Tam
- Eric Nguyen as Thanh
- Jean-Baptiste Huynh as Étienne
- Carlo Brandt as Castellani
- Hubert Saint-Macaryas Raymond
- Andrzej Sewerynas Hébrard
- Thibault de Montalembertas Charles-Henri
- Như Quỳnhas Sao
Production
[edit]The film was shot mainly inImperial City, Hue,Ha Long(Ha Long Bay) andNinh Binh(Phát Diệm Cathedral) inVietnam.[3]Butterworthin Malaysia was used as a substitute forSaigonand Éliane Devries' "Lang-Sai" plantation house was actuallyCrag Hotelin Penang, Malaysia.[4][5]Some parts were filmed inCheong Fatt Tze Mansion,in George Town,Penang,Malaysia.[6] Principal photography began on April 8, 1991, and concluded on August 22, 1991.
Release
[edit]Box office
[edit]The film received a total of 3,198,663 cinema-goers in France, making it the 6th most attended film of the year.[7]The film also grossed $5,603,158 in North America.[8]
Critical reception
[edit]On review aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes,Indochineholds an approval rating of 75%, based on 20 reviews, and an average rating of 6.4/10.[9]
Critics' reviews praised the film's photography and scenery, while citing issues with the plot and character development.Roger Ebertwrote the film "intends to be the French '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. “[10]
Rita Kempley ofThe Washington Postfound 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. DirectorRegis Wargnierseems 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 ofClaude 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 ".[11]
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 ".[12]
Accolades
[edit]- The film was selected for screening as part of the Cannes Classics section at the2016 Cannes Film Festival.[18]
See also
[edit]- List of submissions to the 65th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
- List of French submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
References
[edit]- ^"Indochine (1992) – JPBox-Office".
- ^ab"The 65th Academy Awards (1993) Nominees and Winners".Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).Archivedfrom the original on 9 November 2014.Retrieved22 October2011.
- ^Ng, Josee (1 October 2021)."Indochine (1992): A Historical Movie About Vietnam That Won An Oscar".TheSmartLocal Vietnam.Retrieved13 April2022.
- ^"Saigon on the Silver Screen".saigoneer.
- ^"Borneo Expat Writer".19 November 2009.
- ^"Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion".Architectural Digest.31 July 2003.
- ^"Indochine (1992) – JPBox-Office".
- ^"Indochine".Box Office Mojo.
- ^"Indochine".Rotten Tomatoes.Retrieved11 January2023.
- ^Ebert, Roger (5 February 1993)."Indochine movie review".Rogerebert.Retrieved13 April2022.
- ^Kempley, Rita (5 February 1993)."Indochine".The Washington Post.Retrieved13 April2022.
- ^Davis, Nick."Indochine".Nick’s Flick Picks.Archivedfrom the original on 28 February 2001.Retrieved13 April2022.
- ^"BAFTA Awards: Film in 1994".BAFTA.1994.Retrieved16 September2016.
- ^"The 1993 Caesars Ceremony".César Awards.Retrieved5 July2021.
- ^"Indochine – Golden Globes".HFPA.Retrieved5 July2021.
- ^"1992 Award Winners".National Board of Review.Retrieved5 July2021.
- ^"1992 New York Film Critics Circle Awards".New York Film Critics Circle.Retrieved5 July2021.
- ^"Cannes Classics 2016".Cannes Film Festival.20 April 2016. Archived fromthe originalon 10 February 2017.Retrieved21 April2016.
External links
[edit]- 1992 films
- 1992 romantic drama films
- 1990s French films
- 1990s French-language films
- French historical drama films
- French historical romance 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 featuring a Best Supporting 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
- Films whose cinematographer won the Best Cinematography César Award
- BAC Films films