Indochine
Directed by Regis Wargnier
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Perez, Linh Dan Pham, Jean Yanne
Reviewed by Steve Painter
I'd like to be able to say something nice about Indochine, a film coming up for commercial release off the film festival circuit. But the only thing I can think of is that the scenery is great, particularly the tortured cliffs and islands of the Tonkin coast.
With big story, big star and big budget ($24 million, reputedly the biggest in the history of French cinema), it should be a good movie, but most of the acting is ordinary, the story flaccid (150 minutes) and the dialogue stilted (whether it flows better in French, I don't know).
The main problem is the script, which spends a lot of time wavering between mourning for the end of French culture in Asia and celebrating the end of brutal French colonialism. Probably the intention was to establish a tension between the two, but this doesn't happen. The thing flops around hopelessly, coming down finally on the side of Francophilism, with the Vietnamese Communists/nationalists undeniably the victors but a shade too driven and ruthless for the cultured plantation owner/narrator (who whipped her workers only with a sad heart).
Of course, the script writers would have needed to be pretty good, given the soapie plot they set themselves: orphaned Annamese princess and adoptive French mother/plantation owner both fall for handsome young French officer who doubles as a brutal pig at night on the delta, burning sampans and leaving people to drown. Young princess gets to see a bit of the reality of French colonialism, shoots another French officer, takes it on the lam with first French officer and eventually becomes a prominent Communist (the Red Princess). Maybe it could be done well, but in this instance, mix in some panoramic scenery and you've got something like French farce meets Hollywood epic.
Then there's Deneuve, heavily disguised as a clothes horse, different hairdo in just about every scene, never raising a sweat whether she's administering a whipping or flaked out in an opium den (are these the scenes filmed in Switzerland?). It's probably not her fault.