Indochine

Regis Wargnier's Indochine (1992) received respectful reviews and an armful of awards, including Catherine Deneuve's only Oscar nod. It's a large-scale historical romance, but more Merchant-Ivory than David Lean. Groggy's a sucker for romantic epics, yet even his patience was tried by this long, discursive movie, which can't settle on a story to tell.

Eliane Devries (Catherine Deneuve) manages a rubber plantation in 1930s Indochina, unphased by and Communist agitation. She dotes on Camille (Linh Dan Pham), her Vietnamese adoptive daughter with royal parentage. Devries pursues a reckless affair with Jean-Baptiste (Vincent Perez), an intense young naval officer. Things grow complicated when Jean-Baptiste rescues Camille during a police raid; it's love at first sight. After Jean-Baptiste is reassigned to the backwater outpost of Dragon Island, Camille abandons her revolutionary husband Tahn (Eric Nguyen) and pursues him. After Camille kills a French sailor, she and Jean-Baptiste become fugitives, with policeman Guy (Jean Yanne) pursuing them across Indochina.

Indochine makes superb use of authentic Vietnamese locations. Wargnier and photographer Francoise Catonne frame stunning images, from the sumptuous courts of pro-French mandarins to elegant Saigon and the sweltering jungle. One incredible shot (recalling Lawrence of Arabia's desert oil tanker) shows a sampan breezing through a rice paddy. The beautiful scenery and exquisite period detail make Indochine stunning to watch, even when the narrative sags.

The first half works, mainly thanks to Catherine Deneuve. Stunning at 49, Denevue proves a forceful screen presence, a matriarchal embodiment of France's imperial decadence. Reserved and forceful in public, menacing her charges with a quirt, she privately indulges her sexual appetites and taste for opium. She has little time either for Guy, her antiquated father or her native servants. Her relationship with Camille advances this further: Camille can be neither Vietnamese nor truly French. As long as Indochine focuses on Eliane, it's solid.

But Indochine grows increasingly incoherent. Wargnier strays from this main story, establishing a dozen plot points that go nowhere. Jean-Baptiste arrives at a godforsaken outpost out of Joseph Conrad, which serves as a de facto slave market. This intriguing setting vanishes after two scenes. Eliane's assistant (Dominique Blanc), fired early on, superfluously resurfaces as a lounge singer. Guy's manhunt and Tahn's Communist activism also get short shrift. Any of these strands could support a film, but Wargnier treats them so superficially they don't register.

What ultimately kills Indochine is its central romance. The scenes of Camille and Jean-Baptiste in exile prove deadening. It doesn't work, partly because there's no narrative drive but also because they've no chemistry. The two meet "cute" (as cute as one can be spattered with blood) and it's epochal love at first sight, so much that Camille leaves her husband and treks to Cochin-china in pursuit of Jean-Baptiste. Too bad there's a marked lack of depth to their relationship. Vincent Perez and Linh Dan give solid turns but can't overcome cripplingly superficial characterization.

Indochine ultimately proves frustrating. It's a grand-looking film, with appealing stars and a great sense of time and place. It's also a mess, which no amount of good acting or portentous Patrick Doyle music can obscure.