In colonial-era Vietnam, Jean-Baptiste (Vincent Perez), a dashing French naval captain; Eliane (Catherine Deneuve), a wealthy plantation owner of French parentage; and her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille (Linh Dan Pham), are the three points of a cross-cultural romantic triangle. As the struggle against European imperialism sweeps Indochina, Jean-Baptiste and Camille have to choose sides and Eliane faces the emotionally difficult challenge of raising the child of her daughter and ex-lover.

Deneuve stars as Elaine Devries, the seemingly repressed owner of a prosperous rubber plantation in French Indochina. Her steely exterior, however, is only a mask intended to hide her torrid love affairs from upperclass society. But when her adopted Indochinese daughter innocently falls in love with Eliane’s secret lover, the scandalous lovers’ triangle threatens to destroy their entire family. A sensual story of unbridled passion set against the violence of the bloody Communist uprising, Indochine is a historically accurate, emotionally wrenching epic of love and war.