December 20th: INDOCHINE (Régis Wargnier,1992)

A French plantation owner in 1930s occupied Indochina reckons with the changing times when her adopted Vietnamese daughter becomes a revolutionary in the growing nationalist movement.

Writer-director Régis Wargnier worked as an assistant director under such names as French New Wave co-founder Claude Chabrol, and started making his own films in the mid-1980s. He approached national icon Catherine Deneuve with the script for his debut feature The Woman of My Life, but the actress turned it down.

Wargnier was contacted by producer Eric Heumann with the offer of a sizable budget to make a large-scale historical epic, with eyes on a film that would do well on the international stage. The story was developed by Wargnier with a team of co-writers he had worked with before.

Five years later after his first offer, Wargnier contacted Deneuve again, with a lead role he had written especially for her. While she was skeptical about her abilities to do justice to the character, this time she accepted. The cast also includes Swiss actor Vincent Perez (Time Regained, The Crow: City of Angels), frequent Wargnier collaborator Dominique Blanc (a 4-time César award winner), and Vietnamese newcomer Linh Dan Pham (The Beat That My Heart Skipped).

While some of the film was shot on soundstages in Paris, the exteriors were shot on location in Malaysia (standing in for Saigon) and various cities in Vietnam including Halong Bay and Hue, one of the first western narrative features to do so. The costumes were designed by Gabrielle Pescucci (The Age of Innocence).

The film was a huge success in France, selling over 3 million tickets. It made over 5 million in its U.S. release. It received 12 César nominations, winning awards for Deneuve, Blanc, the cinematography, production design, and sound. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film as well as earning Deneuve a nomination for Best Actress, a rarity for a non-English-speaking role.

Running time is 2.5 hours.