Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Indochine Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson March 1, 2023

Régis Wargnier was one in a relatively large group of filmmakers (both old and new) who contributed to the expansion of the French film industry in the 1980s. This included the likes of Claude Berri, Marc Caro, Patrice Chéreau, Alain Corneau, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Patrice Leconte, and Jean-Paul Rappeneau. An assistant director to Claude Chabrol and Volker Schlöndorff, Wargnier got his first directing assignment in 1986 for La femme de ma vie (The Woman in My Life), which earned him the César prize for Best First Film. His second feature Je suis le seigneur du château (I’m the King of the Castle) caught the attention of producer Eric Heumann, who suggested to Wargnier a movie about Indochina. According to Judy Stone in her book, Eye on the World: Conversations with International Filmmakers, Heumann wanted something akin to Madame Butterfly but Wargnier didn't latch on to the idea until the word “Indochine” was brought up. Wargnier's father served as an army officer during the French-IndoChina conflict. Wargnier delved deep into history of the colonial territories. He also was motivated to produce a picture about this period since really none had been made.

The Saigon-born Éliane Devries (Catherine Deneuve) is a widow and owner of a rubber plantation in 1930 French IndoChina. She lives with her father, Émile (Henri Marteau), and Camille (Linh Dan Pham), her 16-year-old adopted Vietnamese daughter. Camille is a princess of Annam. Her parents perished in a plane crash. They were among Éliane's closest friends. Éliane is probably as close to Camille as anyone. Camille has a boyfriend, Tanh (Eric Nguyen), who's the son of Eliane's friend, Madame Minh Tam (Thi Hoe Tranh Huu Trieu), a successful Vietnamese businesswoman. Complications arise on several fronts with the arrival of Jean-Baptiste Le Guen (Vincent Pérez), a dashing French naval officer. Éliane and Jean-Baptiste are initially smitten with each other but she later prefers not to get too involved with him. Guy Asselin (Jean Yanne), head of the Sûreté (the French Criminal Investigation Department) also has romantic affections for Éliane but she just wants to stay single and remain independent from men. During a street uprising, Jean- Baptiste rescues Camille, who falls in love with the handsome (and much older) officer. All of these romantic entanglements are told against a sweeping historical backdrop. Indochine shows the formation of the Vietnamese Communist Party and the revolutionaries who mount an attack on the Mandarians, the Imperial bureaucrats who are aiding the French colonists. When Éliane arranges to send Jean-Baptiste to an outpost to get him away from her daughter, Camille attempts to make the great trek across IndoChina to Ha Long Bay to reunite with her lover.

Indochine won five César awards and Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes and the Oscars. It's international success at awards season in 1993 should come as no surprise. It's a historical epic made with the visual grandeur of a long David Lean film. (The extreme long shot of Éliane walking with her umbrella echoes a similar shot of Adela Quested with her umbrella in A Passage to India, another seminal film about colonialism.) Wargnier does not over-direct his actors at all. Catherine Deneuve delivers a flawless performance as a woman whose smarts and wealth can only control so much. Vincent Pérez does a most stellar job of revealing the humanity of a flawed character who isn't especially likeable in the picture's first half. Indochine has an episodic narrative that's sometimes melodramatic due to some schmaltzy material. But this is a byproduct of the genre that Wargnier is working in. It also has a few pacing issues in the center but remains eminently watchable from start to finish.

Indochine Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sony Pictures Classics' new Blu-ray release of Indochine appears in its originally composed ratio of 1.85:1 on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50 (disc size: 25.63 GB). In 2016, Studiocanal supervised the restoration of Indochine's original camera negative, which was restored frame by frame in 4K by L'Immagine Ritrovata. Screenshot # 26 confirms this. Six years ago, my colleague Svet Atanasov reviewed Studiocanal's 2017 BD-50 from the UK. I can confirm Svet's statement that Régis Wargnier also supervised this restoration, a fact cross-referenced in Carlotta Films' press kit for the film's re-release at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. Cinematographer François Catonné's colorful lensing is reproduced nicely here, although Sony's authoring and compression are subpar. Indochine runs 160 minutes and Sony has encoded it at an average video bitrate of only 14487 kbps. I noticed a little banding, but only during the mother-daughter scene shown in frame grab #14. There's been a concern by our community of readers that L'Immagine Ritrovata can push for teal in their restorations. Fortunately, the teal isn't a major problem on this transfer of Indochine. Screenshot #s 15-24 display some teal in the signage, greenery, and vegetation. Keep in mind that the water in the river is described by a character as "jade green." Film grain is managed and balanced well. I concur with Svet's observations about the image and would add that the blacks could be deeper (without being crushed).

There is no menu. The disc's seventeen chapters for the feature must be accessed via remote control.

Indochine Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sony has supplied a French/Vietnamese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround remix (3511 kbps, 24-bit) and a French/Vietnamese DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo (2050 kbps, 24-bit), the latter of which is the original theatrical sound track. (Indochine was mixed in Dolby Stereo.) This marks the second BD edition to feature the movie's original stereo mix. South Korean label INFO encoded its Blu-ray with an LPCM 2.0 track on its 2018 release. (The Region B French/UK discs do not.) I listened to the uncompressed 5.1 track, which is both clear and crisp.

Patrick Doyle's music opens up the surrounds on the remix. In the liner notes to the Varèse Sarabande soundtrack album of Indochine, Doyle writes that Wargnier "has a great love of symphonic music, always knew his film should be served by a large symphonic score." Doyle wrote a fully symphonic score for the Disney adventure Shipwrecked a year earlier and was more than up for the task here. He composed propulsive brass for the action scenes, which deliver some great spatial dynamics across my home theater. Lawrence Ashmore's orchestrations need to be lauded. In addition, Doyle incorporated some acapella voices which he tried to give "a secular sound seemingly coming from another world or time." Their haunting, spiritual voices seem to come from the ancestors of both the Vietnamese and the French.

Sony's optional English subtitles appear in a clear white font (see Screenshot #25).

Indochine Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Region B disc included an hour-long 2016 retrospective doc about the making of the film: Indochine: Une Epopee a la Francaise (Indochine: A Very French Epic). This has not been ported over here. Extras are nil.

Indochine Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's surprising that for one of its country's most prestigious films from the 1990s, Studiocanal chose not to put Indochine on UHD in 2017 or since. After two decades since its R1 DVD, Sony has finally released a Blu-ray of the longer "International Version." Sony's a/v presentation of the 4K restoration is sufficient. I would have preferred a much higher bitrate for the video but the disc does include two lossless audio tracks, each with a bit depth of 24. It's too bad that Sony could not have licensed the making-of doc. Régis Wargnier's debut feature La Femme de ma vie received a 4K remaster last year and I'm hoping for an English-friendly edition (plus more of Wargnier) I also have my fingers crossed for more early Vincent Perez: La maison de jade (1988) and Fanfan (1993). A SOLID RECOMMENDATION for this bare bones release.