Final Report Of Cross-Cultural
Communication
指導老師: 何孟菁 教
授
Group members
92220005
92110170
92110576
92110242
92110146
報告日期:民國93年6月
王 昱(leader)
王淑卿
辛明珠
吳秀蘭
謝福林
87110356 李兆生
Job distribution of the group
members
92220005
王
昱
撰稿及版面設計
92110170
王淑卿
初稿及彙整
92110576
辛明珠
版面設計及審稿
92110242
吳秀蘭
校對
92110146
謝福林
校對
87110356
李兆生
校對
Content
s
1. A summary of the
plot
2. The discussion
3. Our reflection upon
the movie
Summary Plot
Eliane is a wealthy French owner of rubber plantation
in French colony of Indo-China in the 1930s. She is born in
Indo-China and lives with father and Camilier, an orphaned
Indo-Chinese princess whose parents died in an accident.
A French naval officer named Jean-Baptiste saves
Camilier’s life during a street uprising. Eliane confronts the
fact that her daughter has fallen in love with Jean-Baptiste,
her secret lover who broke her heart before.
Summary Plot
She interferes in the career of Jean-Baptiste, reassigned
him to an isolated outpost and arranges Camilier to marry
with Tang, a native businesswoman’s son. But Eliane has
underestimated them. However, Tang is an enlightened
Western- educated elite. He upholds Camilier to flee to seek
the man she loves and he also becomes a leader of
Communist finally.
In the meantime, the French are facing in losing the
control in Indo-China. During her hazardous journey on foot,
Camilier meets a few refugees and joins in them to reach the
remote place. Finding her friends abused and killed by the
French, she killed a French officer in agony while she
reunites with Jean-Baptiste.
Summary Plot
Jean-Baptiste is accused of outlaw because he helped
Camilier run away. The young lovers hides themselves in the
countless islands and tries to survive for years under the
assistance of Communist, until one day Jean-Baptiste is
captured with his baby by the French army. Camilier is
separated from her lover and her son forever and then she is
arrested into prison for five years because of being against
the State.
Eventually, the infant adopted by Eliane and raised in
France after Camilier becomes a revolutionist of Vietnam.
Discussion of Q1
Eliane is born in Indo-China. However, unlike many of her
French friends, she follows many of the local customs and
habits and seeks the closeness to the local people to an
extent.
Eliane truly loves the land and its people, and cares for
her workers like a firm mother. She often dressed in local
tropical chic. From time to time a native servant prepares her
an opium pipe. She even adopts an Indo-Chinese princess
whose parents died, and tries to bring up young girl in the
ways of the French aristocracy.
Discussion of Q1
When Camilier asks her the impression of French girls,
she answers “I am the Asian, like mango, not a French
which eating apple.” When she adopts Camilier’s son, she
keeps complaining about the baby’s ugliness with her
native servant instead of praise. However, this is a custom
in Indo-China which could make baby avoid the curse of
devil.
Although Eliane sees herself as an Asian, born on her
father's estates, never having been to France, but the local
people still see her somewhat differently because she looks
like a Frenchwoman.
Discussion of Q2
Eliane's adopted daughter, Camilier is young and naive—
very close to Eliane. She educated in French school and tries
to be a French lady although she is an orphaned native
princess. Take a clear example, she learns the tango with
her mother in the movie. It is apparent that she is the
unique heir of her dead parents’ princely estates and
Eliane's own kingdom of plantations and houses. But
Camilier looks forward to true love indeed. She infatuated
with Jean-Baptiste when Camilier saved by him from a
terrorist. She decides to run away from home to seek her
dream lover in secret while Eliane tries to arrange for her
marriage.
Discussion of Q2
The journey changed her cultural identity thoroughly.
Camilier got a chance to see what the French colonial power
is really doing to her country and discovers a new passion for
her homeland and penniless people. Camilier’s mind gets
alienated from France when she saw her friends of refugee
which she built a close relationship with during the journey
are killed by French army. Eventually Camilier represents the
spirit of a national confident and becomes a leader in the
Vietnamese revolt against the French colonialism. She is
transformed from obedient naïve mademoiselle to a raging
revolutionist.
Discussion of Q3
Eliane being as wealthy and powerful as she is.
However her carefully constructed world begins to come
apart when she embarks upon a passionate affair with a
handsome young French naval officer named Jean-Baptiste.
Despite her professed cynicism about love, Eliane soon
finds herself hopelessly dependent on this callow officer.
When he refuses to commit to Eliane, instead wishing to
continue exploring the world, their brief relationship ends.
But circumstances bring them together again when JeanBaptiste rescues Camilier during a street uprising, not
knowing that she is Eliane’s adopted daughter.
Discussion of Q3
Jean-Baptiste represents the conflicted passions of the
French. He pronounces that he must have freedom when he
rejects Eliane, but he shows no such footloose spirit once he
is with Camilier. However, Eliane’s conservative exterior
obscures her strong passion, which becomes evident when
Jean-Baptiste enters her life for a brief romance. Although
Eliane is French, she never understands French people’s
love stories--there is nothing but passion, fury and suffering,
just like the war. From this point, we find Eliane is
influenced deeply from Asian’s culture.
92110170
王淑卿
It's a good story for me. I can see the impact of
different
culture
between
the
French
and
the
Vietnamese. I also realize a very touching love-story and
I find how great a mother is from the plot.
A mother-daughter relationship becomes different
because of political tumult. Eliane, a French plantation
owner in colonial Vietnam, shows mother’s love to protect
Camille who is a Vietnamese orphan girl from injury. She
raises
Camille with all the advantages of a French
education
and
beautiful
clothes,
growing
up
in
a
surrounding, Camille just wants to seek her love as
romance of most of the French. What Eliane does for
Camille and for the Vietnamese attracts me very much.
Maybe Eliane is autocratic in handling everything, but she
is a great woman who performs her duty for the French,
the Vietnamese and for her family.
The central element of the movie is the tale of how
Camille and Jean-Baptiste meet, fall in love, and confront
an uncertain future. It’s a pity that both Eliane and her
daughter fall in love with the same French navel officer,
Jean-Baptiste. Watching the process that Jean-Baptiste
and Camille seek for their love, I can’t control my strong
emotion: I cried.
It did hold my interest throughout the time I spent
watching, however, and gave me a picture of what Vietnam
must have been like for the French. They lived a fairytale
existence in the lap of luxury while all around them. People
were being exploited and worked to death. I enjoyed the
film even though it lacked the bite and emotional
engagement that I would have preferred.
92220005 王 昱
This movie impressed me deeply with its touching plot
and sad love story.
The issue of the exploitation of Indo-Chinese is
omnipresent. Especially, when I see workers risked their
lives to flee from plantation and starved for their freedom
in Ha Long Bay, only to be betrayed once again by the
French who sold them into slavery. The movie shows how
the French colonizers treated the Indo-Chinese as slaves,
separating their families, how people were weighed and
examined like cattle before being sold into bondage.
Clearly,
the
movie
succeeded
in
capturing
the
arrogance of the colonizers and the firmness of IndoChinese. They had enough resentment to overthrow the
French and drive them out of their homeland.
In the ending of movie, Camilier chose a tough life
firmly. It brings me mixed feelings. I hope Camilier could
reunite with her son and Eliane. However, so she is an
Indo-Chinese daughter indeed, not a French daughter.
92110576
辛明珠
Indochina exercises history to express conception and
probe into a factor of history development. The film
describes between colonialist-French and the passive of
colonialist-Indochina (Vietnam) relationship each other. It
utilizes personages to carve mold of relationship each other.
It doesn't strengthen strong impression of colonialist. Also
have given the Vietnam a opportunity to express.
A colonialist viewpoint is different from Indochina.
Vietnam is just a losing-root nation of culture and politics.
It is subjected to French colonize in the nineteenth century.
It is just like Camille who is naïve and beautiful girl. She
had lost parents in bygone years. Her behavior affects the
history as a whole. Camille treats to insinuate a symbol of
modern times Vietnam history.
And Jean-Baptiste have already declared in the play: 「I
want a whole world, I am not bound in a small corner.」The
argument and colonialism powerful ambition reflect each
other. He is also a delegate of French colonialism. Their
relationship explains rights between the passive of
colonialist-Indochina and colonialist-French. This is a search
for the cause of phenomenon.
Also, Eliane represents the imagination of fusing two
cultures that colonial nation as to between colonialist and
the passive of colonialist. She is synthesis of two cultures.
(She represents French to face Indochina and represents
Indochina to face French.) The consciousness explain
colonialist to rely on will oneself, request the passive of
colonialist to satisfy demand oneself. It molds rights position
of a colony. This colonial culture produces cultural drop,
losing and divergence. The passive of colonialist don't follow
the colonialist. It heads for new road in repetition withdifference.
Indochina doesn't accept rights dictatorship of French.
Step by step, Indochina shakes off restraint of French and
then become 「Vietnam」. It just like Camille as to French
culture aspiration of (include Jean-Baptiste). Finally, she
attends revolutionary ranks. The revolutionary cause: on
account of French equality and freedom concept. It can't
compose about two nations, just like Vietnam and French.
They are two independent entities. Because of French
freedom and equality value can highly praise, but they can't
carry out in Indochina. Therefore, cause the passive of
colonialist, commotion and division in thought and politics.
Indochina has undergone to follow and then compose nation
again. This value conception leads to reverse colonialist
control. And then become two different entities of ideals,
politics and rights.
92110242
吳秀蘭
The love between a man and a woman is expected and
also blessed, but it’s actually a tragic love story about the
culture difference between France and French Indo-China.
In 1930 Indo-China was a member of the French Union,
ruled by an imperialistic government. Eliane is a graceful lady
from France. She and her father run one of the biggest
rubber plantations in Lang Sai. They belong to the country’s
elite. Eliane considers herself as “Asian” but her lifestyle is
strictly occidental. She greatest virtue is her love for her
adopted daughter Camille- a Chinese girl.
The daughter falls in live with a young French naval
office that has been until then she mother’s lover. This love
triangle brought Eliane lots of love and pain however; I think
for her culture, she would rather believe that all people have
equal values and equal rights.
The daughter falls in live with a young French naval
office that has been until then she mother’s lover. This
love triangle brought Eliane lots of love and pain however;
I think for her culture, she would rather believe that all
people have equal values and equal rights.
Camille who falls in love with the young French
officer-Jean Baptiste are discovers that his love is
stronger than any distance. She runs away from her
marriage to links up with the officer. On her journey, she
sees first hand the plight of her native people she had
ever known. Her fate was as well as their lost Indo-China.
She never compromise on her terrible situations to where
many people sympathize with The Indo-chine struggle for
political independence.
92110146
謝福林
The big part of DISC almost off-key so I can not visit the all, but
we can image the structure of story. First, this is menial life style at
colony settler, you can find that painful, any situation any thing were
must obey their master, you does not against Second, loving foreign
country always happen in the high society family, because a good
fortune family, especially children want to get more education, study
in extraordinary school or master country school, of course the
exotic mood in a foreign love happen, different culture people love
and life each together. Third, to be forced people always want
against and outrun by rule government, then depend on the liberty
and life easy area or country, so no matter how, the exotic mood
couple in order to their dream or ideality to go into exile each other.
About life in colony I have much recollection, on Second World War,
TAIWAN is by to govern in JAPAN, each man and man was different
animal in the world, I don’t know what is freedom, even, human
right, honors, but it is menial life style.
87110356
李兆生
Indochine is a truly fantastic symphonic score. Since film is an oftenconfused combination of colonialism, travelogue adventure,
revolutionary epic and a love story, it is actually quite surprising that
this score is as unified as it is. Rather, it seems to have taken each
aspect of the film (and the opportunities for a composer within each)
and somehow managed to bring them all under its control in this
score.
Only occasionally referencing the Southeast Asian locale of the story,
It turns in a score that is mostly very European in feel (a decision it
defends on the basis that most of the film's main protagonists are
European). "The Adoption" begins the score with one of these
references, an exotic piece featuring voices and odd harmonies,
which is interrupted by very consonant strings for Elaine's (Catherine
Deneuve) character.
"The Burning Boat" starts with very forbidding brass, from which will
come some of the more exciting thematic material, developing in
"We're Two People" and "The Thunder Storm." These action cues
allow the score to truly shine, raging fury from the brass answered by
heavy crashes from the percussion.
"The Thunder Storm" introduces a new, more hopeful theme for
Camille and Jean-Baptiste (Linh Dan Pham and Vincent Perex,
respectively), and the lovers on the run.
This is offset, of course, by the more travelogue portions, the material
for which is mostly based on a theme that is heard first at the end of
"The Burning Boat," which is then heard taking over the score in "The
Isle of the Dragon."
Darker material prevails in "End of the Journey," featuring the
travelogue theme attempting to be heard over relentless bass drums
and outbursts of the brass. Similarly, "The Escape" features familiar
thematic material given a much more dramatic reading.
Major harmonic violence erupts in the cue "Birth and Revolution."
Unrelated to any of the other thematic material except by orchestration
(in which it is most closely related to "The Burning Boat"), this cue
provides an impetus for the climactic tragedy of the score.
Throughout this all is Elaine's theme, often coming in after major
developments in other thematic material, sometimes (as in "The
Decision") in a very determined reading.
A truly moving moment occurs in "Elaine Finds Camille," in which
the former character searches through a large group of refugees to
find the latter; the music becomes more and more frenzied as Elaine
herself becomes more determined to find her adopted daughter in
the crowd, only to be heartbroken when she does; the music starts
out with some of what was first heard in "The Adoption," which gives
way to the travelogue theme. The theme for Camille and JeanBaptiste is then heard as Elaine embraces Camille, only to end
without resolution as Camille explains her current position to her
mother.
In a style that seems to have gone out of fashion, it reprises all of his
thematic material in "Indochine," the film's end credits sequence.
It's musical direction is assured, and the performance he gets from
the orchestra is fantastic. The orchestrations are perfect, giving the
score an extra veneer of glossy polish. As mentioned earlier, the
score relies on its orchestration as much as it does melodic material.
The recording is nice and spacious. The brass and percussion carry
this score, and they come out detailed and bright, but with the
proper amount of bass. This score is one of it's best, classy and
exciting at the same time at 1992.
THE
END