The film, “Indochine”, is portrayed as being a story told to a young man about his Vietnamese mother by his French “mother”. In the beginning of the film we meet one of the main characters, Elaine, who right off the bat comes across as an independent personality. Having no man in her life other than her father that she lives with, she adopts a Vietnamese girl named Camille who later becomes the focus of the story.
The film takes place during the rise of resistance to French control over the territory of Indochina, which escalates from undercurrent to forefront as the story reaches its climax. Elaine and the other Frenchmen live in a bubble of wealth and safety in their little corner of the country. Having been adopted, Camille goes to a French school and is the only girl in her class with her skin tone. The life she lives is that of the Frenchmen while her own people make up the lower class in the region. It’s not until Camille leaves to find Jean-Baptiste that we as the viewers get to see a broader view of Vietnam. As she travels with a Vietnamese family to Dragon Island, she starts to see what her countrymen are going through and feels closer to them than ever before. Her tipping point occurs when she sees the family she traveled with dead in the bay and murders the French officer. She is then drawn to action, for her people and against the French. Towards the end of the film, Camille refuses to go back “home” with Elaine after being released from prison and asks her mother to bring her baby to France. Camille eventually becomes an activist for Vietnamese independence and a head member of the Vietnamese communist party. With Camille being the protagonist of this film, I’d say the movie sides with the Vietnamese people.
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