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If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

with past of a land. with fragments of its culture. map of love and duty, choices and memories. a story. charming, powerful, seductive. the virtue - extraordinary cast. art of wise director who gives a novel and wonderful pictures, secrets and romantic run to happiness. it is difficult to define it. it remains only beautiful. and this definition is enough. for discover the joy of a special movie, mixture of cinnamon, honey and salt. only advise - see it ! maybe for one of its ingredients. for flavor of love, for nature, for Catherine Deneuve or for the labyrinth of few existences. for romance. or, for cruel verdict. each way to discover it is perfect. because it remains. a meeting.

Throughout the past forty years, much has been written about the Vietnam War. Less has been told about the history of Vietnam before the US got involved. Regis Wargnier's "Indochine" does a really good job.Catherine Deneuve plays Eliane Devries, the owner of a rubber plantation in 1930s Vietnam. Eliane has raised a Vietnamese girl (Lin Dam Pham) as her own and named her Camille. But then, two things change the course of the mother-daughter relationship. One is that Camille falls for French soldier Jean-Baptiste (Vincent Perez). The other is Vietnam's budding independence movement, with which Camille gets involved. Jean-Baptiste's relationship with Camille makes him suspect in the eyes of the colonial government.At the very least, this movie is a fine focus on the events that led up to the US's tragic involvement in Indochina. But it's also a good look at Vietnamese culture (I like it when movies show us a culture that we don't usually get to see), not to mention the Vietnamese landscape. To be certain, I have always considered it important to understand as much as possible about regions such as Indochina, if only to understand why the US got involved there. Definitely a great one. I recommend it.And yes, two weeks ago, I'd never heard of a coxswain (which they mention during the boat racing scene). I only first learned the word while watching the Beijing Olympics.

Some of the INDOCHINE comments already posted are so powerful that I was hesitant to offer my own. I am not an authority on the art of cinema, preferring to experience films and then see what I think/feel about them. INDOCHINE is a profoundly beautiful and moving film. I watch it now and then to recalibrate my moral compass.Background: I believe that colonialism's fate was sealed with the invention of movable type. Granted, it seemed unstoppable for a few centuries, but all forms of Manifest Destiny, et. al, like all dogs, eventually have their day. So will those that are currently wallowing in "puerile, self-congratulatory nationalism," to borrow a phrase from Carl Sagan. Philosophically speaking, colonialism, like slavery, is indefensible. What's to like, unless you're the one doing it? True, there are films that celebrate the triumph of colonial powers over lesser beings. Here are three: THE FOUR FEATHERS, THE SAND PEBBLES, sort of, and GUNGA DIN, also sort of. GUNGA DIN, however, imputes more intelligence to the erudite Thugee leader, GURU, than the three loutish British noncoms who fight him to preserve the RAJ. The noble, water-carrying Gunga Din, a sort of human reincarnation of Rin-Tin-Tin, saves the day and gives his life for his beloved leaders. More than often, such films serve patriotic purposes. Whatever works, eh?INDOCHINE is a fine example of cinematic art with a strong message about social justice and the rights, under Natural Law, of all peoples. It is strikingly beautiful. But under all this beauty lay injustice, cruel exploitation and addiction to drugs and sexual appetites. One sees the rot and decay of the French and Mandarin ruling classes. Compared to them, the Communists didn't look half bad. For more on that subject, look up THE NEW CLASS, by Milovan Djilas, in Wikopedia if you don't want to read it.Just as France held fast to her colonies in Indochina like a parasite, colonist/rubber plantation owner Emile fastened on to his daughter, Elaine. In turn, she clung to her beautiful adopted daughter, Camille. The most striking metaphor was the Tango scene, in which mother and daughter danced a grotesque parody of romance. The young naval officer, Jean Baptiste, saw this very clearly. Confronting Elaine with this awful truth got him banished, his naval career in tatters (actually, it's not quite that simple). It also put in motion a tragic set of events that convulsed the lives of all concerned. The love between Camille and Jean Baptiste survived, living on through their infant son, Etienne, who was adopted and raised by Elaine. Every time I watch this remarkable film I feel emotionally drained. Time to watch something light and funny, eh?

... and there's a lot of that about because Vietnam WAS Indochina at the time this movie deals with which is primarily the 1930s. Eliane Devries (Catherine Deneuve) has both a daughter and a son yet has never given birth which is maybe a metaphor for France 'adopting' Indochina. Like Heart Of Darkness the film employs a frame-narrator in the shape of Deneuve who begins by telling her story to Camille (Linh Dan Pham) whose parents have just been killed and because they were Eliane's best friends she has adopted Camille - who comes with a dowry of her parent's land which swell the size of Eliane's rubber plantation - and both raises and loves her as her own. Devries is a chic Frenchwoman who, for reasons never satisfactorily explained, has forsaken the chic, culture and civilisation of France for a superficially beautiful yet ultimately harsh land that's not unlike the ante-bellum South without the Mississippi. When a young naval officer, Jean-Baptiste (Vincent Perez) appears on the scene the inevitable happens and May and December have their mayfly moment. Jean-Baptiste was, of course, the name of the mime artist in Les Enfants du Paradis and is well chosen given that Perez, who has all the charisma of the Black Hole of Calcutta on a bad day, might just as well be miming for all the animation he brings to his lines. Equally inevitably Camille falls in love with him and when Deneuve has him transferred to a remote outpost Camille follows him and contrives to kill one of his colleagues putting them both on the run. All this is played out against the political unrest that is always a by-product of colonialism. In turn Camille has a child by Jean-Baptiste; he is killed, she becomes something of a Vietnamese La Passionara and Deneuve winds up holding the baby and it is he, now a grown man, to whom Deneuve is narrating the story in 1954 as Indochina became Vietnam. Weighing in at two and a half hours it requires stamina but in addition to Deneuve both Jean Yanne and Dominique Blanc are on hand and against all the odds it does keep you watching.