Indochine

1992. Dir: Regis Wargnier. Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Perez, Linh Dam Pham, Jean Yanne and Dominique Blanc. ●●●●○

Each week in this blog I will be offering a film review. If I'm sufficiently excitied about a new release I'll see that and review it. Other weeks I will simply randomly draw a film from my collection to review.

This afternoon I made that selection and my heart sank. It's not that Indochine is a bad film. It's just that this first selection will say a hug amount about me more than the film, and I've picked a long, sedate french language film. However to select another film would be cheating so here goes.

Indochine - the French name for their territory in SE Asia now Vietnam - opens during a funeral procession. Camille (Linh Dam Pham) has lost her parents, Eliane (Catherine Deneuve) her closest friends. Eliane has inherited thier estate, expanding her sizeable rubber plantation and has adopted their child. When Camille has grown Eliane enters a short but passionate affair with Jean-Baptiste (Vincent Perez), a French naval officer. Camille also falls in love with Jean-Baptiste after he saves her life. To protect her daughter Eliane pulls some strings to have Jean-Baptiste transferred from Saigon. All this comes out in a decadent party to celebrate Camille's graduation.

This would be enough of a film in itself but we're only about one third through and therein lies the major problem with Indochine. It is very very long, 2hours 40 according to the sleeve notes. It's never boring mind although the pace is occasionally glacial. There is just so much plot and story to get in it would be difficult to isolate anywhere it could be sped up or even where some judicious cutting may help.

The performances from Catherine Deneuve and Linh Dam Pham are absolutely superb, but it's the technical elements of this film that really carry it. From that opening funeral you made fully aware of a gorgeous score by Patrick Doyle, Pierre-Yves Gayraud and Gabriella Pescucci's superb costumes and Francois Catonne's precise cinematography. Catonne's art is especially keen when shooting water, in all it's forms.

In fact water is regularly used to signify the emotions of Eliane or Jean-Baptiste, this is underlined in an early auction scene where they bid against each other for a french landscape. For Eliane it's just a painting - she keeps her feelings buttoned up - for the more expressive Jean-Baptiste it's a coast he remembers almost ebing alive. And so Eliane is often surrounded by stagnant or still waters - the mist around the rubber trees, ceremonial ponds the day before Camille's engagement, Lake Geneva at the end. For Jean-Baptiste the water is always flowing; an outpour as he chases Eliane's car, the waterfall where he baptises his son, the sweat on his face after a nightmare.

Whilst we're talking about him sweating I have to point out that whilst we see other characters semi-naked or acting provocatively Jean-Baptiste is the only character who appears to be sexualised. Vincent Perez is mighty gorgeous though and it's difficult not to sexualise him.

Finally this film probaly gives a better understanding of Vietnam, and the conflict, than any American film. Showing as it does the background to the creation of Vietnam, the terrible acts of violence that had been imposed on the Vietnamese people, just the inhabitants of a colony. It's no wonder they fought so hard to keep their independence later.