The always cool and elegant Catherine Deneuve plays a cool, elegant plantation owner in French Indochina swept up in changing times while pursuing a beautiful but cruel French naval officer. Things get complicated when the sailor elopes instead with Deneuve's innocent, adapted Vietnamese daughter, and the young lovers embark on a heroic journey across Southeast Asia: the girl is nearly sold into slavery; the Frenchman rescues her and they escape; a revolution breaks out; the couple is separated; a baby is born; so forth and so on.
Needless to say the plot is packed with enough melodrama to fuel more than one TV miniseries, which proves to be a saving grace. On a purely emotional level the film is shallow but entertaining, not unlike a classy, subtitled soap opera, with over two full hours of grand passion, exotic scenery, and turbulent history. As Deneuve's native housekeeper says: "I'll never understand French people's love stories; they're nothing but folly, fury, and suffering." Which may well be the perfect endorsement for such an unlikely saga.
Needless to say the plot is packed with enough melodrama to fuel more than one TV miniseries, which proves to be a saving grace. On a purely emotional level the film is shallow but entertaining, not unlike a classy, subtitled soap opera, with over two full hours of grand passion, exotic scenery, and turbulent history. As Deneuve's native housekeeper says: "I'll never understand French people's love stories; they're nothing but folly, fury, and suffering." Which may well be the perfect endorsement for such an unlikely saga.