'Indochine'
With ''Indochine, '' French filmmakers have produced the closest thing to a grand, overseas melodrama since Hollywood's olden days.
Exotic locales (shot on location in Vietnam), torrid interracial romance, native revolutionaries, corrupt colonialists, teeming masses, cynical police -- they're all here, along with a hefty star performance from an apparently ageless Catherine Deneuve.
For all of that, plus luxurious production values, the film is sometimes cold and distant, and U.S. audiences may find it difficult to lose themselves in the two-track story.
However, although it is definitely a select-site performer, it could well rope in a crossover audience and find itself profiting in a big way from long-term engagements.
Deneuve is Eliane, an Indochina-born French woman, contemptuous of local French colonial society, who spends as much time as possible working her rubber plantation.
Aside from her father, her main companion is her ward Camille Linh Dan Pham), the orphaned 16-year-old daughter of Annamese royalty whom Eliane has raised since childhood.
A rift appears when each woman independently meets and falls for a dashing French naval officer, Jean-Baptiste Le Guen (Vincent Perez), who's undergoing a kind of existential crisis of his own over his troubled posting.
When Eliane discovers that Camille is seeing Jean-Baptiste, she is furious, not out of jealousy, but because she fears for her ward's status should she not go through with her long-arranged marriage for the sake of a temporarily assigned officer.
Eliane has Jean-Baptiste posted to the far-off Tonkin islands and Camille, mistaking Eliane's motives, runs away to find him.
Camille's search is the beginning of a long journey through her native land that culminates with her arrival at a slave market near Jean-Baptiste's outpost.
Aroused by traders' brutality, Camille commits murder, Jean-Baptiste saves her, and soon the two are fugitives in the Indochinese wilderness, hiding out with communists and dodging French colonial police.
For most of this Deneuve is restricted to discomfiting polite society, working her peasant laborers and conferring with the Saigon police chief, Guy Asselin (Jean Yanne).
Asselin, Eliane's best friend, is a dutiful cynic and it is he who plots to bring Camille and Jean-Baptiste in -- but alive.
Although the two plot strands disconnect at times, the film finally resolves itself as the story of Eliane's loss of Camille and, hence, in part, of her country.
Deneuve's star power helps put this somewhat solipsistic twist over convincingly, however.
The power of the location lensing is sometimes overwhelming, from the forbidding Tonkin islands to the quiet royal dignity of Hue.
Newcomer Linh Dan Pham is attractive and essentially believable, if not completely eloquent, Perez adequately romantic and Yanne, seizing an actor's main chance, a delightful sinner.
INDOCHINE
Sony Pictures Classics
Paradis Films et la Generale Di'Images, Bac Films, Orly Films, Cine Cinq
Director Regis Wargnier
Producer Eric Heumann
Screenplay Erik Orsenna, Louis Gardel, Catherine Cohen, Regis Wargnier
Director of photography Francois Catonne, A.F.C.
Composer Patrick Doyle
Design director Jacques Bunoir
Casting Pierre Amzallag
Color/Dolby
Eliane Catherine Deneuve
Camille Linh Dan Pham
Jean-Baptiste Vincent Perez
Guy Jean Yanne
Running time -- 155 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
Exotic locales (shot on location in Vietnam), torrid interracial romance, native revolutionaries, corrupt colonialists, teeming masses, cynical police -- they're all here, along with a hefty star performance from an apparently ageless Catherine Deneuve.
For all of that, plus luxurious production values, the film is sometimes cold and distant, and U.S. audiences may find it difficult to lose themselves in the two-track story.
However, although it is definitely a select-site performer, it could well rope in a crossover audience and find itself profiting in a big way from long-term engagements.
Deneuve is Eliane, an Indochina-born French woman, contemptuous of local French colonial society, who spends as much time as possible working her rubber plantation.
Aside from her father, her main companion is her ward Camille Linh Dan Pham), the orphaned 16-year-old daughter of Annamese royalty whom Eliane has raised since childhood.
A rift appears when each woman independently meets and falls for a dashing French naval officer, Jean-Baptiste Le Guen (Vincent Perez), who's undergoing a kind of existential crisis of his own over his troubled posting.
When Eliane discovers that Camille is seeing Jean-Baptiste, she is furious, not out of jealousy, but because she fears for her ward's status should she not go through with her long-arranged marriage for the sake of a temporarily assigned officer.
Eliane has Jean-Baptiste posted to the far-off Tonkin islands and Camille, mistaking Eliane's motives, runs away to find him.
Camille's search is the beginning of a long journey through her native land that culminates with her arrival at a slave market near Jean-Baptiste's outpost.
Aroused by traders' brutality, Camille commits murder, Jean-Baptiste saves her, and soon the two are fugitives in the Indochinese wilderness, hiding out with communists and dodging French colonial police.
For most of this Deneuve is restricted to discomfiting polite society, working her peasant laborers and conferring with the Saigon police chief, Guy Asselin (Jean Yanne).
Asselin, Eliane's best friend, is a dutiful cynic and it is he who plots to bring Camille and Jean-Baptiste in -- but alive.
Although the two plot strands disconnect at times, the film finally resolves itself as the story of Eliane's loss of Camille and, hence, in part, of her country.
Deneuve's star power helps put this somewhat solipsistic twist over convincingly, however.
The power of the location lensing is sometimes overwhelming, from the forbidding Tonkin islands to the quiet royal dignity of Hue.
Newcomer Linh Dan Pham is attractive and essentially believable, if not completely eloquent, Perez adequately romantic and Yanne, seizing an actor's main chance, a delightful sinner.
INDOCHINE
Sony Pictures Classics
Paradis Films et la Generale Di'Images, Bac Films, Orly Films, Cine Cinq
Director Regis Wargnier
Producer Eric Heumann
Screenplay Erik Orsenna, Louis Gardel, Catherine Cohen, Regis Wargnier
Director of photography Francois Catonne, A.F.C.
Composer Patrick Doyle
Design director Jacques Bunoir
Casting Pierre Amzallag
Color/Dolby
Eliane Catherine Deneuve
Camille Linh Dan Pham
Jean-Baptiste Vincent Perez
Guy Jean Yanne
Running time -- 155 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13
(c) The Hollywood Reporter...
- 12/23/1992
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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