Indochine (1994)

A big, fat, juicy epic melodrama about the fall of the French empire in Vietnam. Catherine Deneuve plays a rubber-plantation owner who falls in love with a sullen French officer (Vincent Perez) who eventually becomes the lover of her adopted daughter (Linh Dan Pham). Deneuve wears some fabulous outfits and suffers nobly — in fact all three suffer nobly — but Indochine is a victim of its own hyped-up style. It's enjoyable, though (and overlong), in the way old Warner Bros. melodramas from the '30s about rubber plantations and desire were.

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