 |
|
|
Indochine by Stephen Farber Regis Wargnier's Indochine is another kind of foreign film, more reminiscent of Giant or Doctor Zhivago than the black-and-white pictures of the French New Wave. It focuses on a French plantation owner (Catherine Deneuve), her adopted daughter (Linh Dan Pham), and the naval officer (Vincent Perez) whom both of them love. The romance is played out against an epic backdrop--the first stirrings of the communist revolution in Indochina. The picture has the scale of a Hollywood saga and the sensibility of a European masterwork. One of the enticements of foreign films in the '50s and '60s was their visual acuity. Even when they were made on tiny budgets, they used the medium imaginatively and had a strong sensual appeal that Hollywood pictures couldn't match. Recent American movies like Unforgiven, A River Runs Through It and The Last of the Mohicans have their pictorial splendors, but Indochine is another category; it's the most eye-popping film I've seen since Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. This is more than a matter of pretty scenery, exotic sets and magnificent costumes, though Indochine has all of those in abundance. Wargnier has the gift of finding potent images that evoke time and place and distill the essence of theme and character. When Deneuve orders her chauffeur out of the car so that she can be alone with her lover, the chauffeur stands outside under an umbrella in a torrential downpour. The scene lasts only a few seconds, but it summarizes the Europeans' humiliation of their Asian servants. Throughout the film, Wargnier uses haunting images of fire and water, and he creates some magical juxtapositions, like the shot of a boat traveling along a narrow inlet, appearing to glide through a lush green field. The film's visual beauty encompasses the three enormously photogenic principals; Deneuve in particular is one of the ageless wonders of the world. PAGE 1 | 2 |
 |
|
|
The script is sometimes expository rather than dramatic, but it's not simplistic. Indochine captures the arrogance of the French landowners without turning them into monsters, and while it is sympathetic to the Asian revolutionaries, in the final transformation of the heroine's adopted daughter, it also hints at the frightening single-mindedness of the future Vietnamese communists. Because of its parade of splendid images, this film will haunt our dreams long after Hollywood's slapdash hits have been forgotten. Even when it comes to old-fashioned epic storytelling, the Europeans put us to shame. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum. PAGE 1 | 2 |