Melancholic nostalgia, collective memories, and the cinematic representations of nationalistic identities in indochine

Abstract

This essay provides a rhetorical analysis of the French film, Indochine. The authors argue that this cinematic representation constitutes a good example of “melancholic nostalgia,” where producers and viewers used archetypal characters and romantic entanglements as a way of explaining the strengths and weaknesses of various French and “Indo‐Chinese” colonial relationships. The essay argues that the producers of the film tapped into collective longings for symbolic pasts that may never have existed. The authors conclude that Indochine should be considered as a negotiated compromise that tells us more about the needs of modern Western, French and Vietnamese audiences than it does about any “real” colonial past.

Key concepts:

• archetypes
• collective memory
• colonial
• Indochine
• melancholic nostalgia
• rhetoric