The cinematography is gorgeous...the characters are not.

The details are choppy because the narrative is Eliane's (who symbolizes France) and not Camille (Indochina). In fact, right from the start of the movie, it starts with Eliane's voice narrating. Even when Camille was running away through the countryside, we could hear Eliane's thoughts interpreting the escape. We do not see Camille's sexual relationship with JB develop, we don't see her training in becoming a Communist, because Eliane knew little of what actually happend between them, only a few facts that had become legend, and she imposed this with her notions of the emotions involved.

Let me dissect a little...

But with that one encounter she immediately insisted on marrying him and then left everything behind to find him?

And how could he fall for her that quickly? In fact, they exchanged that "loving glance" right when they met at the work camp.

It's like, the 3rd time they met, but still, it's enough for him to also leave everything to run away with her.

whole thing a little bit too fast? It feels unrealistic.

There is no resolution... and so what? Yes of course in American movies you (almost) always have a great and completely fake and artificial "resolution" at the end of a movie. They even make great directors change the endings when they're not satisfied with the real ones (I'm thinking of Blade Runner, in particular : Scott had to replace the original, brilliant but disturbing ending by a really soppy and ridiculous one because people wouldn't take the lack of resolution). Or else, they criticise it (I'm thinking of Mystic River, a gorgeous movie, one of the best I've seen, but yes, the ending is disturbing and no, there's no resolution).

I just don't understand the argument about resolution, nor about the characters. It's like trying to take out all the complexity and the disturbing elements from a movie. I'm always astonished when I hear my American friends complain about the fact that something is "disturbing". To me, if it's not disturbing at all, it's not interesting (or else, it has to be pure, brilliant entertainment). The resolution is there : we go back to the present, and the film ends during the conference which put an end to French colonisation in Indochina.

I've already heard people complain that they hated every single character in Indochine. None of the characters is perfect, that's a fact. They're real, complex characters, they are all a bit prejudiced, selfish, stupid or even sometimes evil. That's what most people are like in real life. I love this film precisely because it shows brilliantly all the paradoxes and complexity of a colonial world falling to pieces.

To a certain extent, this movie reminds me of Gone With the Wind. People may like Scarlett O'Hara because the way the movie is done leads them to like her and see her as a heroine, and yet what is she? She's a real bitch, she's prejudiced, selfish, manipulative, jealous... Rhett Butler is not really a "good" person either. And yet people love them. Gone With the Wind and Indochine are very similar in what they represent (the end of a way of life, people living on plantations, oppressing other people, who see their world come to an end). However, Indochine does show at the same time the point of view of French colonists, and the horrors committed by the French (while Gone With the Wind never shows the dark side of slavery). So, of course, it makes people less likeable, but it makes everything so much more interesting (not that I don't like Gone With the Wind, I like it even more than Indochine, but it does not have its complexity and honesty).

As to the fact that the love story is unrealistic... How many films are realistic? Jean-Baptiste does undergo a big transformation, but this could be explained : he behaved like an arrogant prick and was punished, he may have been humbled, he saw horrors there, he could also have been truly impressed by what Camille has done to find him, and the act he commits to save her is serious enough to bring them a lot closer to one another.