Set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s, this is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement.
A good-looking but naive lad leaves his mountain village to try and make his way in Paris. He thinks maybe he will try acting but things don't go too well for him. Eventually he is forced to sell himself to men and though he meets an attractive girl she is herself a prostitute with a vicious pimp.
The enigmatic but vivid imagery of this loosely plotted film is based on a similarly evocative novel by the Italian author Antonio Tabucchi, Noturno Indiano. An old friend of the hero's has been living in Bombay with a prostitute. His friend Peter Schlemihl (Otto Tausig) is a concentration camp survivor, who went to India after being captivated by a photograph he saw there. When the prostitute writes to him in Europe asking that he rescue his friend from a mysterious malaise, he flies into India to try and help. When he gets to Bombay, he discovers that his friend has disappeared. Following the clues left behind by the friend, and based on his acquaintance with him, he journeys to Madras to speak to a Theosophist dignitary there, and then journeys on to Portugues Goa. With each step of his journey, the hero (Jean-Hugues Anglade) becomes more identified with his friend, and re-enacts in his own person the transformations he must have experienced.
Following a stint as a WWII fighter pilot, Belgian-born Edouard falls in love with an Indonesian woman, has a daughter with her and immigrates to Australia, all without the knowledge of his family back home. Years later, his love has passed away, and he's raising his daughter on his own. When his brother calls seeking help with his failing wool-processing company, Edouard agrees to temporarily return home to aid him.
Mathieu is called on by the French government to investigate murders in the Asian community of Paris. With Chinese and Vietnamese engaged in a bloody slaughterfest, the key to the mystery lies with the orphan girl who Mathieu helped to escape during the fall of Saigon in 1975. Now a beautiful young woman, Mathieu is reunited ten years later with the refugee, and together they attempt to solve the case. He uncovers a CIA plot that has carried over from the last days of the Vietnam War and that is related to the Paris murders.
Olivier Rohan, a young doctor, has just opened a general practice. However, having only a small clientele, he continues to work in the hospital's emergency room. One night, he will witness the unnatural death of a young man.
A little suburban troublemaker, Loulou Graffiti tries to bring together a man and a woman who aren't cut out for each other at all. She discovers, he steals.
An old man teaches a young man to live in the forest and to understand the wild world.
Canada, 1911. Narrated by a vulture, the story of Jesuit Joe, a mixed-race who belongs to a rebel Indian family, which have pay a lot for the defense of their territory. After having striped a policeman of his uniform, Jesuit Joe cross the Far North to give justice.
Inspired by a story, that of a woman who, in the 1940s, organized a commando operation on Boulevard des Hirondelles to get her lover out of prison.
