Indochine

As I did with Earth, I read the reviews to Indochine before I watched the film. I expected something quite different from what I viewed. I’m beginning to think that movie critics are people with opinions who simply pick movies as an opportunity to vent their viewpoints – as the criticism often seems to have little to do with the movie.

I liked Indochine. I expected, based on two of the reviews, to find some sort of fantasy about the great splendor of French colonial Indochina, gone sour. Instead I saw a movie that looked unblinkingly at the sordid underside of that society.

The Hasian and Shugart review suggested that Indochine was representative of a French nostalgia for an empire lost. Nostalgia hardly seems the appropriate term for what is presented in the movie -- as the movie shows the dark underside of French Colonial rule, from Eliane beating a worker (and him, in effect, praising her for having done it) to a highly organized and state-sanctioned sale of slaves in the North (necessary to keep the various plantations in the south humming.) It also shows us the power and influence of the French police and secret police, and how the French were willing to do almost anything to hand onto what they had. We also see French colonials living the life of nobles, with greater wealth than would likely be possible in France -- with only the most limited concern about the consequences of their lifestyle on the Indochinese people. Medieval France has been transplanted to Southeast Asia.

Then Roger Ebet compares Indochine to Gone with the Wind. I don't see the comparison! Eliane was nothing like Scarlett, there wasn’t a great war that destroyed her life and forced her to rebuild. And while Scarlett lost her only child, and the love of her life walked out the door, a lover who turned his back on her without giving a damn, something quite different happens in Indochine. At the end of the movie, Scarlett still had Tara and, by God, she was going to make it great again. Eliane, on the other hand, lost her lover and her daughter, but raised her grandchild. She sold her plantation and business and went to France, where should would fit in and live the life of privilege. She only had one great love, and she turned her back on him, not the other way around. Where are all the parallels?

As I note in my comments from the Group Discussion, there are few truly admirable characters in the movie. Camille comes close, and she seem to be poorly treated by all of the reviewers. Several make the points that Jean-Baptiste is besotted by Camille – and that didn’t seem to be the case, for me, until later in the movie. It wasn’t love or lust at first sight – he was still infatuated wit Eliane until his superior (at Eliane’s request) exiles him to an obscure post in the North. When he later steps in to save Camille at the slave sale, he steps up, and later his lot in with the Indochinese Communist. Not, I would argue, because he loves Camille so profoundly, or is wholly in support of the Communist case, but because he has few options. He did the right thing, but got caught up in the moment. We know, too, however, that he was already upset with the slave trade – so he was acting as a fundamentally decent man who was conflicted. Eliane, on the other hand, always does what she should do -- from a practical perspective -- but never really commits herself to anything or anyone.

Hasian and Shugart characterize Camille as selfish and unfeeling, distinctly non-maternal, in contrast to Eliane’s “nurturing benevolence, self-sacrifice, and strength…” I saw it differently, with a Camille who had a great loss (her lover and her child); I saw her her decision to give up her son to continue her struggle for the people with whom she has been struggling for five years as a selfless act, that put others above her personal needs. Telling Elaine to take Etienne to France is arguably an act of “self-denial” rather than self indulgence.