Review of Indochine

I remember seeing ads for this film on HBO and Cinemax when I was in Middle School. I was hoping it had some type of pornography, how wrong I was! How perverted I was in my adolescent hopes!

This film is anything but pornographic. It is a big Lawrence of Arabia or Schindler's List style of a film. It has big events that intertwine the characters and brings them heartbreakingly into conflict with each other. The characters don't end well. They join the Communists, they are forced to flee, or they end up assasinated.

The film is about 2 hours 40 minutes. I wonder if there is a longer cut. There probably is and it do the film justice if it were released in some kind of Criterion collection edition. They should also make a documentary about the film Too bad they haven't already. Perhaps I'm the only one of this opinion?
Well my study of the film dovetailed with my study of French, neocolonialism, and scriptwriting. Those three subjects come across in the film in great amount.

I really like Catherine Deneuve in this picture. I adored her Belle du Jour. She is perfect. I'm planning on watching more of her films because they are mostly in French. So I will be able to watch films and learn French. The other character I really liked in the film was the French intelligence guy. He was serious and comical at the same time. When he goes in to rescue Deneuve from the Opium Den I thought that was couragious and a great thing to do for a friend. I had never seen the insdie of what an Opium Den looked like back in those day, but it was revealing.

The story is great up until the young Vietnamese girl shoots the French officer. It lags a bit afterwards, but the action picks up after awhile. I like how the story starts to go into flashback towards the end with Deneuve trying to find her adopted daughter. I thought it made the film more creative and lended some non-linearity to the story. The shots of the country where the film was shot were amazing. Totally great.

I have been reading about post-colonialism and I think Asia is a place that awakened after WWII to a new status in the World. Many countries, India, Vietnam, Burma, China they all had new paths to traverse after the fall of Imperialism throughout the World. I'm learning that politically Imperialism or Colonialism is dead. Yet, economically the system of neo-colonialism was still in effect after the war. It's interesting reading for me. I have a deep interest in the World System and current trends in World History