Indochine (1992) - Magnificent Deneuve in Wargnier's picturesque colonial epic

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Co-star Catherine Deneuve marching in a red dress and a flowery hat in front of poor locals in South East Asia in front of a temple makes up this poster for Régis Wargnier's Indochine

A beautiful Frenchwoman with an enormous rubber plantation in colonial French Indochina (Vietnam today) gets drama in her life, when she falls for a French naval officer and starts to feel her colony falling apart around her.

Indochine is written by Catherine Cohen (The Woman of My Life/La Femme de Ma Vie (1986)), Louis Gardel (Himalaya (1999)), Erik Orsenna (La Dette (2000, TV movie)) and co-writer/director Régis Wargnier (The Woman of My Life/La Femme de Ma Vie (1986)).

Catherine Deneuve (Place Vendôme (1998)) is fabulously beautiful and her acting is an enormous pleasure in the lead, paired here with an almost equally photogenic Vincent Perez (Fanfan (2003)) as the officer, who starts out with setting fire to a boat with a heroin-smuggling father and his little boy, but who later gains understanding and sympathy for the hardships of the locals, - mainly because he also falls in love with Deneuve's adopted daughter!

The impressive production is enamored with the foreign landscapes and presents beautiful costumes, hair and faces and in this the Wargnier commits the crime of beautifying the story. Indochine is at times a compelling drama, though at others it is a bit static, and the film is overlong.

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 120 mil. FRF, approximately 4.3 mil. $

Box office: Reportedly 29.6 mil. $

= Huge hit (returned 6.88 times its cost)

[Indochine was released 15 April (France) and runs 159 minutes. 14 companies and support bodies collaborated in the financing and production of the film. Deneuve was paid 2.7 mil. FRF (approximately 513k $) for her performance in the film). Shooting took place from April - August 1991 in Malaysia, Vietnam and in Paris, France. The film sold 3.1 mil. tickets in France, where it was the 6th highest attended of the year, and it made 5.6 mil. $ in North America. Wikipedia lists the impressive 29.6 mil. $ total gross, linking to JPBox-Office, but the figure is not visible on the link, although it is not unlikely. The film was nominated for 2 Oscars, winning for Best Foreign Language Film. It lost Best Actress (Deneuve) to Emma Thompson for Howards End. It was also nominated for a BAFTA and won 5/12 César award nominations as well as a Goya, a Golden Globe and 2 National Board of Review awards, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 2.5/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. Wargnier returned with A French Woman/Une Femme Française (1995). Deneuve returned in My Favorite Season/Ma Saison Préférée (1993); Perez in Cendre d'Or (1992, short) and theatrically in Fanfan (1993). Indochine is fresh at 74 % with a 6.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Indochine?