Abstract: In 1992, three French film productions were released: The Lover (L’Amant) directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, Indochine directed by Regis Wargnier, and Dien Bien Phu directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer. An analysis of the three films’ contents as well as historic and economic conditions of production, reveal that they were an important reflection of France’s process of remembering French Indochina. Panivong Norindr analyzes the three films together in his work, Phantasmatic Indochina (1996), and argues that a nostalgia for French Indochina was created by the directors and for the audience. Is Norindr’s assessment and grouping of these three films justified? A collective analysis of the three films proves that Norindr’s decision is indeed, justified. Consequentially, the nostalgia created through cultural works alike the three films, have shaped the appeal and expectations of tourism to Vietnam to the present day.
Keywords: Vietnam, Cambodia, French Indochina, French Cinema, Tourism
Panivong Norindr’s Phantasmatic Indochina (1996) discusses a series of films released within months of each other in 1992: The Lover (L’Amant) directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, Indochine directed by Regis Wargnier, and Dien Bien Phu directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer. Norindr argues that these films “are part of the filmic memorial that has been ‘erected’ to remember French colonization of Indochina… [that] sustain and reinforce the founding myths of the French colonial presence in the Indochinese peninsula.”[1] Is it fair of Norindr to lump these three films together in his argument found in Phantasmatic Indochina? By utilizing works from other scholars and analyzing the films, it is evident that Norindr’s grouping of the three films are justified. Norindr’s grouping of The Lover, Indochine, and Dien Bien Phu together are connected by cinematic, historic, and economic conditions that have led to a nostalgia of an imagined Indochina. Norindr’s argument is significant because the fantasies facilitated by filmic memorials are projected onto the contemporary tourism industry in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
Defining Nostalgia: Creating the Aura
Indochine, The Lover, and Dien Bien Phu do not have similar plot lines that automatically unite them together. Each contain different character relationships, sources of conflict, and themes; they are only united in their setting of French Indochina. Therefore, how do they all create a desired aura of Indochina? Each film participates in an ahistoricity of Indochina and an evocation of a sense of loss. These two factors are facilitated by a narrative structure of ‘looking back’, which show that the action of looking back is what allows the director and audience to develop desires for an aura and a subsequent fantasy about Indochina.
Ahistoricity is created in each film by primarily using Indochina and historical events to advance the plot.[2] Alison Murray develops Norindr’s argument that the three films evoke nostalgia by discussing how ahistoricity is used to appeal to a modern audience.[3] The characters all require the background of Indochina to exist and for the character and/or plot dynamics to form. For example, in Indochine, Eliane is a French woman born in Indochina who adopts Camille, an Annamese child. With this dynamic established, the film explores Eliane’s sense of belonging in Indochina rather than as a French woman. It also covers Camille and Jean-Baptiste’s forbidden love affair (rooted in race tensions), and then Camille’s turn to becoming a communist revolutionary (rooted in the historical backdrop of French Indochina).
In The Lover, the protagonist is a young girl who is a member of a poor white family in Indochina. The forbidden love affair she pursues is based on the age, race, and class dynamics between a white woman and a Chinese man. French Indochina is the necessary setting for the love affair to occur, and the story is based on the experience of the book’s author, Marguerite Duras herself. In addition, director Jean-Jacques Annaud largely focuses on travel across the landscape: the boat across the Mekong River, the car from the rural countryside to Saigon, the car from the school to the blue house, the rickshaws across the city, and the boat from Indochina to France. The erotic scenes are also filmed within enclosed spaces of the automobile and the bachelor’s room. Therefore, the setting of French Indochina creates an exotic and forbidden context for the plot of the two lovers.
Then, Dien Bien Phu is directly about the First Indochina War. The ahistoricity of Dien Bien Phu is particularly interesting because it is entirely based on a real battle in the First Indochina War. But Schoendoerffer admits that the film is fiction in an interview when saying he wanted the film to be “a fresco, a saga.”[4] The decision to narrate a fictional story allows Schoendoerffer to position the narrative he prioritizes: the comradery between French and Vietnamese soldiers. This is similar to his earlier film The 317th Platoon (1965), as it follows a platoon of “heroic soldiers, abandoned by the metropolitan government and public, making a last stand against an overwhelming enemy.”[5] As a result, the historical context (i.e., colonial Indochina) is never explored and the First Indochina War is treated as a fixed, static event. Again, the setting of Indochina sets up the plot, the characters, and dynamics but the film remains a fictional, ahistoric representation.
The setting of Indochina is used to evoke mystery, adventure, exoticism, and forbidden love. In other words, the melodrama of each film is rooted in the use of Indochina as its background. Because of this, the melodrama in each film becomes associated with the backdrop of Indochina, and the evoked emotions become associated with Indochina as well. This focus on emotion facilitates an aura of Indochina to become the primary focus of the director and the contemporary audience. For example, The Lover’sappeal comes from the forbidden and exotic love affair between the young girl and the lover. This erotic desire is promoted as the primary way of viewing Indochina, creating a sense of yearning for this particular aura.
Moving on, the sense of loss depicted in each film must be spoken on. These films depict a sense of loss which in return, makes the audience yearn for what is lost. This sense of loss is evoked through the narrative structures of each film which take on a form of ‘recollection’. It is revealed in the last-third of Indochine, that the story is being narrated by Eliane as she recalls the story to Etienne, Camille’s son. In the closing scenes, it is further revealed that the story is being told in 1954, thus skipping the First Indochina War. The narrative structure of Eliane telling a story by ‘looking back’ creates a sense of loss through Eliane’s character. Even further,Eliane loses contact with her daughter because Camille becomes a communist revolutionary. This sense of loss is reinforced as Etienne decides not to meet Camille at the Geneva Conference in 1954. This is coincidentally mirroring the relationship seen between Eliane as the colonizer to Camille as the colonized (because Camille’s son, Etienne, ends up in Eliane’s care), which results in a yearning for the colonies through a mother-daughter affective relationship.[6]
In the ending of The Lover,the young girl breaks down into tears on the boat back to Paris. This scene captures the girl’s realization of her love for the lover and evokes a sense of regret for leaving him as well as Indochina behind. This is further supplemented by the narrative structure of Duras narrating the story itself because the film opens with Duras writing The Lover as a book thus framing the entire film as a recollection of a story. Duras’ narration returns in the closing scene of the film as she narrates that the lover never stopped loving her. By making this the closing scene of the film, viewers are left with a feeling of loss to return to the lover and the colony once again. So, a yearning for the colony is created through feelings of regret, loss, and narration of an older Duras about her past.
Lastly in Dien Bien Phu, Schoendoerffer creates an affective relationship based on the comradery between French and Vietnamese soldiers. Even though the Battle of Dien Bien Phu was a battle lost by France, Schoendoerffer’s depiction makes it appear as legendary.[7] This yearning for the colony is best presented through the opening and closing shots of the film. These shots consist of a Vietnamese orchestra that sits behind a French violinist. They are accompanied by a backdrop of a mural that showcases the allegory of the French Republic, Marianne, inspired by Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.[8] The orchestra music that plays as the image of Marianne fades out at the end of the film thus narrates a yearning for “an untainted sense of national glory.”[9] To add, there is a paternalistic narration given by Pierre Schoendoerffer in which he reminisces once the screen fades to black, “Together with the Vietnamese people…. Marking expense for both them and us.”[10] There is a need to bring attention to the comradery between the Vietnamese and the French that Schoendoerffer remembers. This emotional evocation supports why Norindr states that, “Dien Bien Phu continues today to be understood emotionally rather than assessed critically for its filmic quality.”[11]
To summarize, the ahistoricity and sense of loss created by the three films are facilitated by the action of looking back. This action occurs on three levels: the characters, the director, and the audience. The ahistoricity results in a continuing process of creating and projecting onto an imagined Indochina; a time and space that only exists in one’s imagination. The sense of loss creates further emotional ties to Indochina as something that was lost and must be recollected or reclaimed. As a result, the audience becomes a part of the action of looking back because their own desires become projected onto a fictional, filmic Indochina. The landscapes in Indochine, the erotic scenes in The Lover,and the mise-en-scène orchestra in Dien Bien Phu each create visual spectacles to create yearning for an aura of the colony. Specifically, an aura that can be manipulated based on each individual’s desires. Therefore, Norindr is fair to group the three films together as nostalgia films because all three films participate in the creation of a desired aura of Indochina.
National Cinema: The Ties of Production and Distribution
Why is it important to think about the films of 1992 in relation to national cinema? Upon release, these three films represented the works of French cinema in 1992. And in the present, they continue to reflect a moment in the history of France’s film industry. The historical circumstances surrounding the films’ production help to explain why Norindr groups them together, and why they are remembered collectively as well. All three films were commercially successful upon release, but The Lover was notably the most well received at the American box office. In fact, The Lover is only one of two English language French films that have returned exportation returns of over 50 million francs, and more than 10 percent of the total exportation costs in their release year; 1992 for The Lover and the other being Miloš Forman’s Valmont released in 1989.[12]This signifies the marketability and commercial success of The Lover on a global scale. In addition, Indochine received many award nominations and wins. Notably at the 1993 Academy Awards, Catherine Deneuve was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role and the film won Best Foreign Language Film. The films cannot be thought of in separation to the global film market because of this.
In historical context, the resurrection of interest into French Indochina in the 1990s can be attributed to the context of Vietnam. Vietnam underwent a series of economic and foreign affairs reforms in the early 1990s.[13] This notably led to the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1991 and a reamendment of the constitution in 1992, resulting in an opening of its borders and economic policies.[14] In addition, the 1990s ushered in a wave of post-colonial thinking to which France was undergoing with Algeria. However, Indochina was not remembered critically and rather with a distance. Due to the Vietnam War, there was a close association of Vietnam to the United States. The use of ‘Indochina’ appeared to be a way for France to distance themselves from the horrors of war associated with the Vietnam War; notably, the horrors which were the focus of Hollywood films. Indochina was the “better time and place” before American involvement in Vietnam, which also helped France attempt to position themselves in a humanitarian image for refugees of the Vietnam War.[15] This history of Vietnam is key to why there was an interest in Indochina, but also why evoking ‘Indochina’ specifically became useful for the French government.
Moreover, the tie of cinema and global capitalism must be established to realize that cinema is both an economic product as much as a cultural one.[16] French cinema went through a series of reforms in the 1980s driven by “intensified pressure of international competition and the increased interdependence of capitalist economies.”[17] This meant a move towards an ‘internationalization’ of policies surrounding French cinema which would look for domestic and foreign success. By the late 1980s, policy changes indicated that English was a major factor for commercial success, providing new founded support for French, English-language productions.[18] One of these films was The Lover, to which Martine Danan argues that:
“These stars are turned into images of themselves, just as French history itself is turned into a series of beautiful images in these internationally-oriented French films. The past is recounted through glossy, aestheticized representations which do not compel spectators to challenge stereotypes, re-examine the past, and make actual connections with their present experience.”[19]
It is important to return to how The Lover is arguably the most geographically detached film and it has a distinguishing feature that sets it apart from Indochine and Dien Bien Phu. The Lover is an English-language film, subsequentially creating further geographic distance from Southeast Asia and presenting French Indochina as an exotic fairy tale. It is even more fairy tale like because the film’s setting still remains rooted in French; the mother teaches the French language in school, the boarding school’s name is in French, and children in the background sing in French.[20] For Danan, “Such an artificial use of the language helps remove characters from their social context and turn them into commodified abstractions detached from experience.”[21] The role of English is key to understanding the significance of Norindr’s argument of nostalgia as one that goes beyond France to an international audience. Danan’s point supports Norindr’s overarching argument, that the desire of Indochina is through a commodification of its aura.[22] Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 2002 film Two Brothers, is also an English language film set in the Cambodian region of French Indochina. The film’s use of English with a French accent rather than French, follows suit in the fantasy that Annaud creates in The Lover. This aura of a far reaching, exotic time and place, is one that reaches beyond the French imagination. The English language aspect certainly separates The Lover from the other two films, but it has not stopped their joint marketability and connections in production.
To tie back to the connection of all three films, it is important to evaluate their tie in government production and funding. The film industry is tied to politics because, “Governments can support films that they deem worthy, and withhold support from unworthy ones, as part of an international politics of culture.”[23] As stated earlier, the French government benefitted from the use of ‘Indochina’ to disassociate from the United States and the Vietnam War. The Lover, Indochine, and Dien Bien Phu all received government assistance through funding and/or through diplomatic relations for the rights to film in Vietnam. Therefore, the government played a key role in the production process of the three films to film on location. This aspect ties to the marketing of the films’ distribution. For Indochine’s DVD release in 1999, the ‘extended international version’ boasts its Academy Award win on the front and back cover. On the back cover of The Lover’s DVD release in 2001, the film is promoted as “the first foreign film ever shot in Vietnam, though two more French productions quickly followed.” [24] Although the other two films are unnamed, the action of mentioning two other films tie into this conscious grouping of the three films. For Norindr, the audience’s knowledge that it was filmed on location made it more “seductive and appealing.”[25] The DVD’s marketing supports Norindr’s point in promoting The Lover and the other two films as ones filmed on location to entice the audience. In contrast, Dien Bien Phu did not receive as much international distribution compared to Indochine or The Lover. However, a companion book featuring behind the scenes details was released in 1994 titled Dien Bien Phu: From the Battle to the Film. The release of this book coincided with the commemoration of 40 years after the siege of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which exemplifies a commodified marketing of the film in association to wartime commemoration. All in all, it is evident that the three films were created under similar economic and political circumstances, especially in their ability to film on location with government support. Therefore, Norindr’s grouping of the three films together are further justified with these conditions.
Errances to Indochina and to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia
There is a clear intersection of history, scholarship, and films. One prevalent quality that Indochine, The Lover, and Dien Bien Phu have in common is that they are set in Cochinchina, Tonkin, and/or Annam which make up present day Vietnam. This is another reason why Norindr’s grouping of the three films together is justified. It also leads to the question: What are the consequences of the continued grouping of the three films? The focus of Vietnam in scholarship appears reflected in film, because most films of French Indochina are set in Cochinchina, Tonkin, and/or Annam. Academic scholarship on the Cambodian region is limited (at least in the English language).During colonial rule, Cambodia was used as a symbol of native authenticity in colonial imagination (e.g., colonial expositions). Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Two Brothers reproduces that colonial imagination through architecture. By exploring Two Brothers, it will demonstrate how Norindr and subsequent scholars’ focus on Vietnam have continued to create a vagueness about other areas such as Cambodia. As a result, the filmic imagination about French Indochina is similar to the imagination of Indochina created during colonial expositions.
Two Brothers seems unsuspectingly unrelated to much of these conversations about colonial Indochina. However, this film about a tale of two brother tiger cubs, reflects much about Annaud’s imagination about Cambodia and French Indochina alike The Lover. Annaud was enamoured with a spell in Vietnam when deciding to film The Lover there.[26] This sort of fantasy was placed again in the setting of Two Brothers. The plot focuses on the tribulation filled journey of two tigers who must return home to the jungle and to their home – a temple. In the director’s commentary, Annaud names a list of temples where scenes were filmed such as Ta Prohm, Preah Khan, and Beng Mealea. He also states that, “The whole story is fiction, it is a fable. It’s not like a documentary where you say, ‘I will show you the tigers of Ta Prohm.’ No. I wanted, on the contrary, to mix the different temples to have a more invented story.”[27] Annaud’s commentary demonstrates how Cambodian temples were purposefully used for fictious purposes of imagination. It is similar to Schoendoerffer’s decision to make a fictional story based within the First Indochina War, rather than a documentary. Both ended up creating an aura that was useful for the film’s imaginative setting of Indochina. Two Brothers reflect the power that architecture has in popular imagination; just as powerful as it was during colonial rule.
During French colonial rule, the temples of Cambodia became a central part of French colonial imagination about the glorious expansion of empire. Penny Edwards’ book, Cambodge, examines the French undertakings to construct a fantasy of these temples. From 1878 onwards, museums and exhibitions set up in French cities like Paris and Marseille displayed props and replicas of Angkor as a sign of empire.[28] Cambodia was represented in the Universal Exposition (Exposition Universalle) in Paris in 1900, at colonial expositions at Marseille in 1906 and 1922, as well as one in Paris in 1931.[29] This push of creating spaces dedicated to Cambodia (and more broadly, French Indochina) by creating visual spectacles meant that “tourists were whetting their appetites for the ‘real’ experience of the renovated sites of Angkor itself.”[30] And in fact, by the 1920s, Angkor itself was being referred to as Angkor Park; it was landscaped and mapped as a tourist zone.[31]
This comparison seeks to show that the physical spaces created by colonial expositions, created expectations from participants about the colony as well as a sense of yearning. Likewise, contemporary films facilitate the same experience though an exotic portrayal of Indochina. For Murray, all these films participate in an ahistoricity that is more appealing for a modern audience.[32] There is never a temporal beginning or end of the French colony in The Lover, Indochine, Dien Bien Phu, or Two Brothers. And in the recent release of The Sea Wall (2008) directed by Rithy Panh, the narrative structure of ‘looking back’ is still the same; the closing scene jumps from colonial rule to the future of ‘Rice Fields of the White Woman’ in December 2007. Therefore, the visual spectacles created in these films present Indochina as a time and space that is a place of fantasy. During colonial rule, visitors of the colonial expositions could travel to French Indochina directly to experience what they yearned for. Now, visiting French Indochina is not possible, which is why these contemporary films are argued to be evoking a sense of nostalgia. Viewers of these films create an expectation and imagine a time and space that is no longer accessible, a yearning of Norindr’s ‘phantasmatic Indochina’ is created. Although it could be argued that Indochina is only a relic of the past, it is evident that people continue to want to catch a glimpse of what they yearn for in these nostalgic films.
Consequentially, the travel to Southeast Asia continues to present day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia with these sentiments in mind. Spaces of former Indochina has seen a resurgence of tourist popularity, with specific appeal around the Indochinese connection.[33] The very use of the term ‘Indochina’ is a way for tourism to evoke nostalgia, an ahistorical time and space to attract tourists.[34] The implication on tourism indicates that there is a demand for the experience to ‘journey’ to a fantasy of Indochina. The question to then ask is: How does the general public develop this desire? It is through cultural products and popular culture; categories which are dominated by film, literature, and music. The way that French Indochina is most accessible is through cultural representations, and it is the root of the desire formed in the public. In this way, the relationship that film has with its audience is integral to understanding the real-life consequences of this phantasm. Emmanuelle Peyvel examined the tourism in Vietnam through the “imaginary of the French colonial period.”[35] In July 2007, Peyvel interviewed a French couple, Karine and Nicolas, about their expectations prior to arriving in Vietnam. Karine responded that she expected, “Something like in Marguerite Duras’ novels, a mood like in the film The Lover by Jean-Jacques Annaud.”[36] This couple was 32 years old at the time of the interview, therefore the release of The Lover coincided with their older teen/young adult life. This couple did not encounter Indochina in real life per say but through cultural products, especially as The Lover became a commercial success upon its release. As Peyvel shows, Duras’ novels and films like The Lover, shape the colonial imagination of those who encounter them. It is significant to note how Karine expected a ‘mood’ in particular, because it exhibits how cultural works indeed do create an aura through emotions and feelings. And to conclude on this effect, it is important to see the highlighting effect it has had on Vietnam specifically. Indochine, The Lover, and Dien Bien Phu were set in Vietnam, which further reflect how ideas of French Indochina is primarily through the access point of Vietnam in particular. Again, this shows that Norindr’s lumping of the three films are further justified with their real-life effects on the tourism industry in Southeast Asia.
In light of this examination of the tourism industry however, Peyvel also brings up an important point in asking, “Do all French people share the same imaginary on the French colonial era in Viet Nam?”[37] The interviews taken from Peyvel are only a few of many who travel to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia which makes it impossible to generalize the collective expectations and consciousness of those who decide to travel. Peyvel also points out that “the link between these imaginaries perceived as collective and the capacity for someone to perform it as an individual tourist project” is a difficult process to tease out. Peyvel’s reflection is an important reminder of the limits of Norindr’s argument of the evocation of a ‘phantasmatic Indochina’. This evaluation of the field has shown that many scholars support Norindr’s point and groupings of the films The Lover, Indochine, and Dien Bien Phu in a joint analysis of filmic memorials. But it is important to keep in mind that it is ill practice to prescribe a universalizing narrative. To say that the collective memory of French Indochina is entirely filled with nostalgia and a yearning for national glory, is not well practiced. It is not to say that Norindr’s argument is any way less effective. Rather, Norindr shows that these films do indeed create a nostalgia around French Indochina. However, the relationship between the audience and film is one that cannot be captured wholly. As new generations grow up reading Duras’ novels or watching films on Indochina, there is still more opportunity for audience members to establish a nostalgic relationship with French Indochina. In order to “decolonize the imagination” for the future, there must be scholarship like Norindr’s that discusses and critically analyzes this nostalgia to come to a moment of realization.[38]
In conclusion, Norindr’s grouping of Indochine, The Lover, and Dien Bien Phu is justified because they all create a commodified aura of Indochina and were produced under similar historical, political, and economic contexts. Each film uses ahistoricity, a sense of loss, and a narrative structure of ‘looking back’ that creates nostalgia for the colony. Second, the three films were produced under similar historic circumstances regarding the Vietnam War and changes in the French film industry. This has led to continued joint memory of the three films in later stages of distribution (e.g., DVDs). Lastly, the three films are set primarily in Cochinchina, Tonkin, and/or Annam which is present day Vietnam. This has led to a distinct effect on the present-day tourism industry in Southeast Asia. Going forward, Norindr’s argument of filmic memorials continue to be applicable to other films such as to Two Brothers (2002)and The Sea Wall (2008). As French Indochina is in a constant state of remembrance and re-remembrance, Indochine, The Lover, and Dien Bien Phu captured a significant moment of that process in 1992.
Grace J. Park is a BA graduate of History and East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto (2021). Her research interests focus on the processes of memory-making and the dissemination of historical narratives that shape people’s everyday lives.
Bibliography
Annaud, Jean-Jacques, dir. The Lover. 1992; Santa Monica, CA: MGM Home Entertainment Inc., 2001. DVD.
Annaud, Jean-Jacques, dir. Two Brothers. 2004; Willowdale, ON: Universal Studios Canada, 2004. DVD.
Cooper, Nicola. France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters. Oxford: New York, 2001.
Danan, Martine. “From a ‘Prenational’ to a ‘Postnational’ French Cinema.” Film History 8, no. 1 (1996): 72-84. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3815217.
Duiker, William J. The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996.
Edwards, Kathryn M. Contesting Indochina: French Remembrance Between Decolonization and Cold War. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016.
Edwards, Penny. Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007.
Murray, Alison. “Women, Nostalgia, Memory: Chocolat, Outremer, and Indochine.” Research in African Literatures 33, no. 2 (2002): 235-244. doi:10.1353/ral.2002.0053.
Norindr, Panivong. Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film, and Literature. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.
Peyvel, Emmanuelle. “Visiting Indochina, the imaginary of the French colonial period in today’s touristic Việt Nam.” Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change. 9, no. 3 (2011): 226-236. doi: 10.1080/14766825.2011.620121.
Schoendoerffer, Pierre, dir. The 317th Platoon. 1965; Long Island City, NY: Films Around the World Inc., 2017. DVD.
Schoendoerffer, Pierre, dir. Dien Bien Phu. 1992.
Schoendoerffer, Pierre. Dien Bien Phu: De La Bataille au Film. Paris: Fixot/Lincoln, 1992.
Wargnier, Regis, dir. Indochine. 1992; Culver City, CA: Columbia TriStar Home Video, 1999. DVD.
Williams, Alan. “Introduction.” In Film and Nationalism. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002.
[1] Panivong Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film, and Literature (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 153.
[2] Alison Murray, “Women, Nostalgia, Memory: Chocolat, Outremer, and Indochine,” Research in African Literatures 33, no. 2 (2002): 237-238, doi:10.1353/ral.2002.0053.
[3] Ibid., 241.
[4] Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina, 146.
[5] Kathryn M. Edwards, Contesting Indochina: French Remembrance Between Decolonization and Cold War (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 176.
[6] Murray, “Women, Nostalgia, Memory,” 236
[7] Nicola Cooper, France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters (Oxford: New York, 2001), 215.
[8] Pierre Schoendoerffer, Dien Bien Phu: De La Bataille au Film (Paris: Fixot/Lincoln, 1992), 130-131.
[9] Cooper, France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters, 207.
[10] Dien Bien Phu, directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer (1992).
[11] Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina, 149.
[12] Martine Danan, “From a ‘Prenational’ to a ‘Postnational’ French Cinema,” Film History 8, no. 1 (1996): 82, www.jstor.org/stable/3815217.
[13] William J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 372-373.
[14] Ibid., 372-373.
[15] Cooper, France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters, 198.
[16] Alan Williams, “Introduction,” in Film and Nationalism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 11.
[17] Danan, “From a ‘Prenational’ to a ‘Postnational’ French Cinema,” 76.
[18] Ibid., 78.
[19] Ibid., 79-80.
[20] Ibid., 80.
[21] Ibid., 80.
[22] Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina, 13.
[23] Williams, “Introduction,” 6.
[24] The Lover directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (1992; Santa Monica, CA: MGM Home Entertainment Inc., 2001), DVD.
[25] Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina, 145.
[26] Ibid., 141.
[27] Two Brothers, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (2004; Willowdale, ON: Universal Studios Canada, 2004), DVD.
[28] Penny Edwards, Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007), 29.
[29] Ibid., 29.
[30] Ibid., 51.
[31] Ibid., 156.
[32] Murray, “Women, Nostalgia, Memory,” 241.
[33] Ibid., 203.
[34] Cooper, France in Indochina, 205.
[35] Emmanuelle Peyvel, “Visiting Indochina, the imaginary of the French colonial period in today’s touristic Việt Nam,” Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change. 9, no. 3 (2011): 226, doi: 10.1080/14766825.2011.620121.
[36] Ibid., 231.
[37] Ibid., 234.
[38] Murray, “Women, Nostalgia, Memory,” 242.
