This story is set in 1930, at the time when French colonial rule in Indochina is ending. An unmarried French woman who works in the rubber fields, raises a Vietnamese princess as if she was her own daughter. She, and her daughter both fall in love with a young French navy officer, which will change both their lives significantly.Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like if you mention "Vietnam" to the average American, you would have them thinking about our country's role in the Vietnam War. Specifically, how it affected our veterans. Rarely would you get anyone thinking about the country itself. And also, it may not be well-known (though it should be) that France had a far deeper history in the region than the United States ever did.This film looks great, and may have some of that glamor that is not realistic, but it does attempt to show the interaction of the French and the Vietnamese (in what was called French Indochina). Anyone interested in Vietnam or colonialism ought to check it out.

You don't miss something until it is gone. This film is loaded as one commenter stated with nostalgia for what never was. A Frenchman going to Indochina in 1930s would be no different than an American going to Samoa or Guam or Puerto Rico today; some did it to make money or fill a private sector job most did it for government work. In Indochina I bet you could count on the head of a pin the number of beautiful women (De Neuve) who ran large rubber plantations and frequented opium dens---n'existaient pas! except in the mind of the French Danielle Steele who wrote this silly thing. It would have been infinitely more enjoyable if it had stayed Danielle Steele instead a UN human rights/ignorant view of colonialism Sunday school lesson.

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.