— Overview
A Korean essay stays with the film’s look at French colonial sight, and with the name “Indochina” itself: a word that places Vietnam between India and China, and leaves Vietnam, as a subject, out.
— Contents and key concepts
A 1992 film, told by Éliane
Régis Wargnier’s Indochine was made in 1992 — a student draft that dates it to “199” is simply a typo — and took prizes at French and international festivals that year. It is a romance set in Vietnam when the country was a French colony, often called Indochina. Catherine Deneuve plays Éliane Devries, a French woman of the colonial upper class; the film moves in her monologue.
The plot the Korean essay keeps at the center is Camille’s. Linh Dan Pham plays Camille, Éliane’s adopted daughter and a Vietnamese princess. She goes in search of Jean-Baptiste Le Guen, a French officer played by Vincent Perez, the man she loves, and the two live as fugitives.
A name that leaves Vietnam out
Under French rule, Vietnam was grouped with Laos and Cambodia as French Indochina. The word itself, the essay notes, means India and China: a name taken from a position between two large neighbors, and from cultures shaped by both. That geography is real enough. The writer’s sharper point is that the name still says nothing about Vietnam as a subject. Vietnam is explained by two greater powers, and exists inside the phrase as an object.
The film, in this account, lets us see how France then looked at the colony, and how, in 1992, France looked back. Imperial sight is in the naming as much as in the plot: a country spoken of as the space between other countries.
A 1992 opening of relations, kept in its year
The same essay sets the film beside Korea’s own tie to Vietnam, and that history needs a date. Diplomatic relations, broken in the years after the Vietnam War — in which Korean troops had fought — were normalized in 1992, the year of the film, after a period of medical and agricultural missions and the acceptance of boat people had already begun to repair the link. Trade figures the writer cites from 2008, exports and imports on the order of 80.4 and 62.9 billion dollars, belong to that later window; they are not a current ledger.
What the essay wants from all this is not a survey of two countries. It is a way of seeing why a film about a French woman, a Vietnamese princess, and a French officer still helps a reader ask what “Indochina” was for. The Korean original, uncut, is on CampusDown.
Sources
- A student account of Régis Wargnier’s 1992 film Indochine, following Éliane Devries and Camille, and asking why the colony was named for India and China.
Last updated 15 November 2026
Frequently asked questions
Who directed Indochine, and in what year?
Régis Wargnier directed the film in 1992. It was widely awarded that year in France and abroad. Catherine Deneuve plays Éliane Devries; Linh Dan Pham plays Camille; Vincent Perez plays Jean-Baptiste Le Guen.
What story does the film tell?
The film is told in Éliane’s voice, a French woman of standing in colonial Vietnam. The main thread, a Korean essay stresses, is that Camille, her adopted daughter and a Vietnamese princess, goes to find Jean-Baptiste, the French officer she loves, and lives on the run with him.
Why does the essay dwell on the name “Indochina”?
French Indochina grouped Vietnam with Laos and Cambodia. The name points to a place between India and China, in geography and in culture, and, the writer argues, to a colonial way of seeing: Vietnam is described by two larger powers and is not named as itself. The film, made in 1992, also shows France looking back on that past.
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