In the last years of the French occupation of Vietnam, French noblewoman Ariane (Catherine Deneuve) ran a rubber plantation in southern Vietnam. She adopted a Vietnamese princess Camille (Linh Dan Pham) whose parents had both died, and the two lived together. Ariane fell in love with the young Vietnamese colonial navy officer Zhan Baptist (Vincent Perez), but Zhan later fell in love with Camille. Camille vowed to marry Zhan and ran away from home to follow Zhan to Long Island in northern Vietnam. On the way, Camille was hunted down for accidentally killing a French officer, and the two began to flee. On the way, they gave birth to their son Etienne, and eventually the two were arrested and the son was handed over to his grandmother Ariane for upbringing. Zhan refused to return to his country for trial and committed suicide in anger; Camille was released from prison due to amnesty. When Ariane went to take her home, Camille left the family without hesitation and became a staunch communist for Vietnamese national independence. A few years later, when Etienne met her mother again as a member of the Vietnamese delegation to the Geneva negotiations, the two had become distant and estranged. This film won the 65th Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.