Beauty and Sorrow
This deeply felt and emotionally rich portrait of a country about to change forever is one of the most beautiful films ever made. It is elegant and opulent in its visual presentation and subtle in its human tale of heartbreak. This film has the majesty of morning sunlight on water we dare not shield our eyes from for fear we will miss one moment of its glory.
Director Reigis Wargnier has created a masterpiece of epic beauty, showing us the country of Vietnam when it existed as the French colony Indochine. He shows how and why the communist uprising was so popular and the way of life it threatened. It does not make judgements but shows the human drama and the heartbreak caused by a way of life that existed and the one that was coming to change it.
Wargnier accomplishes all this in a slow and visually stunning portrait of one family in Indochine. The story is centered around the magnificent performance of Catherine Deneuve as French rubber plantation owner Eliane...
Love and History
From the opening sequence of a royal funeral to the last shot of Deneuve in Switzerland, this movie had me enthralled. It has everything that makes a movie exceptional: strong acting from its leads, beautiful cinematography, a romantic and emotionally wrenching love story, a tense historical backdrop, beautiful actors and a well-plotted storyline. This movie draws you in, pulling you into that beautiful and passionate world of 1930's Indochina. (Indochina was the collective name of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos when they were still under French control)
The story revolves around a powerful French, plantation owner Eliane (Deneuve), her adopted Indochinese daughter Camille (Pham) and the French naval officer who romances these two women, Jean Baptiste (Perez). The movie starts off with Eliane having an illicit affair with the young Jean-Baptiste, only to have her heart broken when the officer starts feeling claustrophobic in their relationship. Unfazed, Eliane carries on with her...
Haunting film....
Sometimes I don't think the critics watch the films they review. I was stunned by this film. The cinematography is brilliant--the colors, the pagentry, the filth, the blood, the dreamy quality of a boat with two lovers drifting through those thousands of little vertical islands that lie off the coast of Asia so faithfully depicted in Chinese brush paintings and Blue Willow porcelein.
Catherine Deneuve is gorgeous. If any criticism can be leveled at the film it is that she is so beautiful, and her clothing so stunning it can be distracting at times. Her young lieutenant lover whose name excapes me (Queen Margot's lover) is smoldering. Her adopted (Vietnamese) daughter is a China doll.
The story takes place in what was French Indochina before WWII, and later became the countries of Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Thailand. The story centers on a rubber plantation owner (Deneuve) and her relationship with her adopted daughter. Deneuve raises the girl to have the European...
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