FILM REVIEW :: Indochine (1992, Regis Warner)

This film, starring Catherine Deneuve, takes place in French Indochina, and tells the story of a French plantation owner (Deneuve), who adopts a young Indo-Chinese girl when her parents are killed. The girl, Camille, is beloved by her white mother and grandfather, and is raised amid extravagant wealth, power, and luxury.
Elaine, the plantation owner, is a stoic woman who says at one point early in the film, "Unlike you (referring to Jean-Baptiste, the French Navy soldier), I am not accustomed to parading my feelings in public."

This statement sums up Elaine's character throughout the entire film. She is the picture of restraint, which highlights even more the rare and fleeting moments of intense despair or weakness that she does show.

This stoicness, this feigned indifference or coldness, is something that RTF talks about as being integral to tango. In this film, tango is featured in 2 separate scenes. The first is early on, and shows a laughing mother and daughter (Elaine and her adopted daughter Camille) practicing the European stiff-arm tango to a record player. They appear unsure, and awkward, and ultimately collapse on a couch in laughter. Camille asks her mother, "When will I know I am in love?", and Eliane answers her, "When it happens you will know".

The 2nd tango scene indicates the psyhological and emotional changes that have occurred in both women. They have both fallen in love with the same man, Jean-Baptiste. Eliane knows it, but Camille is unaware of her mother's affair. Eliane has summoned her strength stalwartness and has determined to protect her daughter by having Jean-Baptiste transferred to a remote naval post. Camille, for the moment, is only heartsick for her lover, and distressed at his not having arrived at the party.

Eliane rises up from the dinner table when the music starts, and leads Camille to the dance floor, removing her daughter's wrap from her shoulders as she walks. With solemn, somber faces that display plainly their emotional resolve and distress, the women dance a graceful, melancholy tango in perfect rhythm. Each has learned to dance tango through learning the heartaches of love.