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VIETNAM LOVE IS THE FINAL DESTINATION
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
A FILM BY MEI-CHEN CHALAIS BASED ON HER STORY
DIRECTED BY IN CO-OPERATION WITH
Whether I like it or not, and always,
Vietnam has been part of every stage of my life.
Thanks to my mother's courage,
I was lucky enough to survive the bombings,
not to stay working in the rice fields,
to take a boat to France
and meet the love of my life,
the writer and journalist François Chalais.
AN INVOLUNTARY BATTLE
I was born during this war
when the French were trying to hold on to an Indochina
that was not yet called Vietnam.
A strange birth,
very different from that of other little girls,
because I was born with a life,
but almost no chance to live.
However, nothing will ever stop childhood
from turning the worst nightmares into fairy tales.
One day, I remember, my mother was washing me
when the distinctive roar of a squadron of planes was heard.
Suddenly, driven by some premonition,
my aunt screamed at my mother to get me out of the bath,
and wrapping me in a towel,
we went to take refuge in one of the trenches
that had been dug everywhere as air-raid shelters.
We had just taken cover when there was a barrage of bombs.
One of them crashed into our house
leaving a big hole where the bathtub was.
I often wondered if it was this childhood,
this tragedy, this hopeless life
that gave her a kind of instinct.
HOA BINH PROVINCE
At the beginning of the 1950s, in the Hoa Binh region,
Viet Minh General Ngo Minh Dzien, Mei-Chen's future father,
was operating about 100 kilometers north of Hanoi,
on one of the strategic routes to the Chinese border.
His wife followed her general husband, in the Asian way,
and Mei-Chen was born
in one of those stilt huts,
between two battles.
Driven out of the Tonkin Delta,
the Viet Minh launched a major attack
on Nam Dinh, less than 60 kilometers from Hanoi.
Led by elite divisions,
a human wave swept over the Franco-Vietnamese positions.
My mother was very happy
when she followed my father into the jungle.
My mother was an activist.
She took care of people, dressed wounds,
cooked for them with what she had.
And it so happened that, of course,
I was conceived and that's where I was born.
As French troops advanced,
the Viet Minh had ordered a scorched earth policy.
Leaving no refuge for enemy soldiers
when they reached our villages,
preventing them from setting up camp
and treating their wounded..
This also had the advantage of confusing the trails,
making it impossible to navigate with maps.
My parents escaped by burning their own house,
taking only a few belongings.
How could you not be strong?
In an instant, you have everything, and you can lose it all.
For me, Ninh Binh,
the Perfume River is the most beautiful landscape in Vietnam.
Look,
when there was war in all this forest,
you can imagine how the Vietnamese
could blend into nature.
They had bamboo,
and inside, they hid food, rice,
and the soldiers could hold out for a long time against the French.
These caves were traps with no way out.
It was full of adventures.
She met my father when she was 19.
My mother had me 12 years later.
MADAM DUNG MEI-CHEN'S MOTHER
Your father was a great charmer.
Whenever he was on the street, all the girls looked at him.
Even my mother was very jealous.
She was in love,
but she couldn't help suspecting him,
and always asked him the same question,
"Why do you lie to me?"
And he would reply,
"Because I love and respect you
"that I can't tell you everything."
I lived with your father for 12 years before you were born.
But when I was born,
she didn't want him to know, for several reasons.
When she was pregnant,
she found out that my father had cheated on her.
So she ran away, she left,
she didn't want my father to come get me.
She was afraid.
My mother wanted to break with her past,
so she moved to the mountains.
With my aunt,
I naturally joined the trip.
To help us survive, with my aunt,
during those few months,
my mother had to sell her wedding ring
and first little coat for a bowl of rice.
To survive, she had to rent something.
Since she had no money,
she rented a small place with a wooden bed,
a mat and four bamboo poles.
To everyone passing by,
she tried to sell some rice, some tea.
They were just passing customers.
Beds made of planks with woven reed mats
allowed travelers to rest for a few hours
or an entire night between stages of their journey.
My mother told me that every time
one of our guests was about to leave,
I would cling to them, crying, trying to take their luggage.
I thought he was stealing our things.
Or when the man wore a khaki uniform,
I would follow him,
thinking he was the one we missed so much, my father.
It was hard to pull me away from these strangers
towards whom I rushed with all a child
can already have of reserve,
tenderness, and need to love.
At that time, a woman who leaves her husband
and leaves, during the war, to give birth alone,
was daring and risky,
but also courageous.
My mother left during the French war, with me,
a little girl on her back, crossing deadly rice fields.
Shots from one side, the French,
and the other side, the Viet Cong.
You can't forget a childhood like that.
When I ran, I feared for you,
I held you to my chest,
shots from both sides.
I put you on the ground to protect you.
I thought,
"If someone has to die, it'll be me first."
Bullets were whizzing, shots fired from all sides,
I wasn't afraid.
- You weren't afraid of death? - No.
When you love your child so much,
you're not afraid of death.
The water in the rice fields reached up to here.
Those same blood-stained rice fields,
my mother, indeed, crossed them with a pounding heart,
her feet scraped, and on her shoulders,
she carried a small child, me.
There were Viet Minh soldiers firing
whenever they saw something move.
And opposite, separated only by a field and some bushes,
the French, ready to unleash a pack of ferocious dogs.
As a precaution,
my mother had dyed her black hair white.
She had wrapped one of her arms and a leg
with a rag soaked in pig's blood,
as if it were a bandage.
That way, she had told me,
she looked like a wounded old woman.
The French soldiers did not rape wounded old women.
The Japanese did.
From escape to escape, village to village,
their last hopes vanished,
despite all their cunning, sacrifice and courage,
my mother and aunt were exhausted.
They will soon have only one solution left,
to head to the rice fields
and be captured by the French.
And when I got to the other side of the swamp,
the French took me prisoner..
MADAM DUNG MEI-CHEN'S MOTHER
And the French captured us.
And I said, "My daughter is so hungry,
"please, can you give us something to eat?"
We got in the car, and they took us back to Hanoi.
When I think of her,
she is an extraordinary, courageous woman.
She did everything for me.
She saved me. She went through it all.
She faced many trials,
very, very, very hard trials that marked me forever.
The French captured me,
thinking I was part of the Viet Minh.
They imprisoned me in Hanoi.
There was a French captain
who needed a governess.
MADAM DUNG MEI-CHEN'S MOTHER
He liked me, so he brought me to his home.
Mei-Chen and her mother won't stay in prison for long.
A French captain took them under his wing
and, in a complete turnaround,
lived with his mother and gave her a child, Roger.
My mother was now living with the French captain,
and so I had a Eurasian half-brother.
With the man who had become my stepfather,
we experienced months of apparent calm.
Above all, I felt for the first time a feeling
that I would seek all my life,
the feeling of being protected.
And so, when she escaped
and was held prisoner by this French captain,
she was accused of treason
and that she had left with a Frenchman.
But in the end, no,
she was saved by this man.
Luckily, he saved us.
They investigated to find out if,
before living with the French captain,
if she wasn't a spy,
because Vietnamese women were infiltrating
to kill officers.
Some images remain etched in my memory,
and they are terrible.
One day, two men broke into our home.
I must have been three or four years old,
I was playing in front of our house with my doll
when they rushed at my mother.
One of them had a dagger in his hand.
I didn't understand what they were saying
and even less the reason for their presence,
except that a few seconds later,
my mother, dragged by her hair, was lying on the ground.
The top of her torn dress was stained with blood.
She had a deep wound behind her ear.
I would later learn it was to punish her for loving a Frenchman.
That's a terrible memory.
The memory of this little girl
knocking on every door and seeing her mother covered in blood,
is an image that has marked me forever.
They stabbed my mother, she was dying.
And fortunately, people arrived,
the maid and others,
and they called the French captain
who took her to the hospital and saved her.
But she still has a scar.
She had a scar behind her ear.
A millimeter more, she would have died, mom.
So, the captain,
when he saw that she had been stabbed,
sent us to Saigon.
With his generous and delicate way of caring for us,
the French captain had become like a second father to me.
He loved me, for his part, as if I had been his daughter.
Mom had just bought me a new dress,
she wanted us to go and have our picture taken.
They were my first little shoes,
and my feet hurt.
My little brother and I were there,
living in a beautiful house in Saigon,
it was wonderful.
SAIGON
I left Hanoi when I was two years old to come to Saigon.
I spent two very happy years here.
I was, of course, so young that I don't remember well,
but still, some things remain in my memory.
And I remember this Catinat street,
where we had a house,
and the Continental hotel where my half-brother was baptized.
At the end of the war, they sent my brother, Roger,
to a family in France, in Montauban.
So, they separated my mother and me from my little brother.
My mother was so unhappy, and so was I, we were separated,
we lived only a very short time in Vietnam,
together, in Saigon.
We were so unhappy
that the French captain said,
since the American war had started,
the captain said,
"You are so unhappy being separated from Roger..."
from my little brother, "...that I will get you two tickets
"and you will arrive in Marseille."
To save us...
also from the start of the American war.
It was a tragedy.
They take away your roots,
they take away things from you and you're thrust forward.
I remember that on this boat,
I was holding my little doll Bella,
I remember it well.
It took us a month to arrive in Marseille.
I was leaving my country, I was sad.
I wondered, "When will I return to Vietnam?
"When will I see my country again?
I was leaving, but at the same time, I was happy,
because I knew that I was going to an unknown country,
which was France,
and I would see my little brother again.
That was the most extraordinary
and wonderful thing for me.
But I didn't know the fate that would await me in France.
My mother was strength, tenderness and energy.
She was a heroine.
She couldn't read or write,
because back then,
girls weren't sent to school.
This privilege was reserved for boys.
She gave her not just life by having her escape
all that childhood tragedy, the tragedy of fleeing.
But I think it was a constant source of nourishment.
To get through it,
what do you have to do?
I think her mother passed this on to her.
Among many other things, of course,
but she gave her this strength,
this ability to see beyond words,
beyond forms.
I think her mom is probably
the foundation of her temperament.
I am really coming back to my roots here,
and I am truly happy.
I feel good here,
I feel serene, calm
and I am discovering a wonderful country.
Really, I think it is one of the most beautiful countries in the world.
My return to Vietnam, overwhelming,
my desire to discover the truth.
Why?
Another question,
why don't I have my father's name?
As if my mother,
once again, wanted to deny his existence.
Your father had an affair with his young secretary.
I was seven months pregnant, and he wanted to live with her,
while still keeping me.
If you want to leave me, you must leave our child."
And mom said, "Never. Even if I have to beg,
"I will be much happier.
"I don't need you."
She left.
She left my father out of love and pride.
In love with a 19-year-old girl,
my father had left my mother,
who was then in her thirties.
I was very young then,
so I have no memories of it.
But even now,
whenever my mother thinks of my father,
I see the sadness on her face,
even if,
for sentimental reasons and pride,
she tries to hide it.
I know well,
how hard she took that forced separation.
You resemble him.
All this leaves a...
how should I say, a deep mark.
What Jean Genet calls a unique wound.
She is a woman who carries her unique wound within her.
She speaks little,
but you can tell from her demeanor
and the way she looks at you
that she understands everything.
She sees what you have been through, how you have suffered,
who you are now, what you love.
There's infinite tenderness and humanity in this woman.
This is where my mother lived in Hanoi.
Here, in this house,
my mother brought me when I was very little,
I was a baby.
We had barely stayed inside, with my aunt Tuyet,
when it was bombed from all sides.
And half of our house was destroyed.
She lived through the Indochina War in all its aspects.
She survived all that.
She saved her daughter from Indochina,
she went through events
you only read about in books.
Just looking at her, you could tell
she had an incredible story.
But she had a natural expression
in her look, in her eyes,
that reflected all those events.
When you have lived a great adventure
and breathed the intense smells of danger and death,
of hope too,
you cannot be quite like the others.
There is always an inner voice telling me,
"Remember where you come from
"and what you could have been if luck had not protected you."
That gives me a lot of strength.
Every time I see her, even today,
I always have an image that is superimposed,
it is this extraordinary image
of a young Vietnamese girl on the road,
a lost little girl, crying, under the bombs.
And every time I see Mei-Chen,
this images comes to mind,
like a superimposed scene in a movie.
To me, Mei-Chen symbolizes
all the suffering of Indochina and Vietnam.
That is my grandfather and my grandmother.
The grandparents were very, very tough,
very tough.
My mother was beaten
with her arms like this.
Back then, they were whipped,
salt was put on their wounds
to make it hurt even more.
That's my grandfather. That's my grandmother.
On my father's side, of course.
Vietnamese people are not afraid of death.
The habit of living for the future
and the belief in the existence of a soul distinct from the body
mean that the elderly buy what they call a longevity set
and choose their coffin in advance.
This is what my grandfather did,
who, during the war, placed his coffin near his bed
to be prepared for any eventuality.
Unlike in the West,
the elderly are revered as living good luck icons.
We take care of them until they die,
and there is no question of putting them in a retirement home.
Did my father really fight at Ninh Binh?
Another episode of his life or death
that will never be clarified.
Visiting Ninh Binh for the first time
and discovering such a magnificent landscape
so incredibly serene,
I felt the need to keep following
in my father's footsteps.
These people have suffered.
They suffered physically, they suffered in their lives,
and through the scars of their era.
Her father was close to Giáp.
I think he was a general.
He led the guerrilla, especially in the North.
And then, he was killed.
When I was old enough to ask questions
that could be answered,
I asked what happened to my father.
I was told that he had died in the war,
but in such a strange voice
that this mystery seemed unsolved.
Died in the war?
Back then, it was the norm.
Dying in war was more natural than dying in bed.
I felt like something was being hidden from me.
And if he had died, how did it happen?
Had he been killed in Dien Bien Phu
or at the start of the American War?
Had he been executed by a hostile clan?
Whatever he did
and however he died,
my father will always remain for me
as my childhood saw him: magnificent, proud and generous,
as if a legend could be real.
She is quite discreet.
She told me about her origins,
that she never knew her father.
She told me about her coming to France
very late.
This is your father's brother.
He's your father's real brother.
Do you know me?
A little bit.
My journey takes me to my father's homeland.
My grandfather owned rice fields
and part of this village where he was the mayor.
Almost the whole village and the rice fields belonged to them.
Now, only a bit of the rice fields remain.
In the company of my paternal family,
I feel a deep emotion
walking through the war-torn alleys.
This is the real countryside.
This is the old house where my father was born.
NGO MINH DZIEN MEI-CHEN'S FATHER
She says he was very tall and very handsome.
MEI-CHEN'S UNCLE
The view is amazing...
over the rooftops and the pagoda. It's stunning.
Everything around is old.
The French demolished this tower.
All that's left is this bell. They rebuilt it.
All these Buddhas are Buddhist teachings.
There you go, to be happy on Earth,
you mustn't ask for too much.
Don't... There you go.
Everything represents something for our peace of mind
and not wanting too much either.
That's all of Buddhism, the whole Zen aspect.
So, my mother was an incredible Buddhist.
My mother believed in the reincarnation of Buddha.
My mother practiced everything related to Buddhism,
the rituals, the mediums
who dance in red and green robes,
incredible dances.
They enter into a trance.
My mother met Vietnamese women in Paris
who performed these medium dances.
And I saw suitcases at my mother's place
with red, green yellow dresses.
One day, she wanted me to go see her,
but it scared me,
because these women were in a trance.
They were dancing, they were singing,
as if possessed by a demon.
So, I saw my mother doing this kind of dance.
But what is incredible is that I was baptized,
my brother Roger was baptized
and mom, when she had an accident,
she had a heart attack,
my mother almost died,
she suddenly started praying to God.
Why pray to God when she was a Buddhist?
And she started praying, saying,
"My God, my God, save me.
"If you save me,
"I'll convert to your faith."
She thought about it for a long time,
and we prepared her baptism a year later,
even though she was adamant.
Before, she said, "I am Buddhist, I don't want to."
And when she had the accident, she was afraid,
she was afraid of being separated from us.
It was very, very touching.
Because being afraid of separation,
she was ready to do anything,
even converting to be with her children.
Today, I am very happy to have brought my mother back
for the Vietnamese New Year.
We were scattered,
torn apart by the war
and could never reunite.
And today, it is a Vietnamese New Year meal
where we are all together.
I brought mom back,
when she brought me to France when I was four years old.
She's very moved.
I am so happy to be reunited with all of you!
MADAM NGUYEN KIM DUNG
I am very happy.
When I took you, you were four years old.
Today, it was you who brought me back to Vietnam...
to meet my family.
Since she had been ill,
she said, "I hope one day you'll take me back to Vietnam."
Because she was afraid she couldn't return the jewelry to her mother,
so my grandmother, which she had taken during the war.
This time,
I really want to visit my mother's grave.
I am going to buy her clothes and jewelry,
but will she receive them?
But at the same time, it bothered her
and she always said,
the closer the end got, the more she said,
"Take me back, promise me that you will take me back to Vietnam
"so that I can give the jewelry to your grandmother."
I was able to bring her back, and we kept our promises.
So, it was really something wonderful
and essential in our lives,
since we could keep our promises.
As she wished to return the jewelry stolen during the war,
I could accompany my mother to Vietnam.
My younger brother, Roger, came with me.
For the first time, moved, he discovered Vietnam,
his homeland, with our mom and me.
It was a moment of happiness,
reflection and sharing.
We were able to fulfill our dream,
complete this journey. I didn't think we could,
but it's wonderful, as I could take mom
where she wanted to go.
I think it was our journey together
to the ends of the earth,
our own Vietnam and our dreams.
A JOURNEY OF LUCK AND LOVE
An incredible fate awaits me.
Everything that happened to me afterwards, every day, was a miracle.
I thought I could, thanks to my looks,
find a way to help us financially,
my mother and me.
I was asked to lend my face and hands
for advertising photos.
Television also called me
to dance in variety shows.
When they needed
a fleeting Asian spy in a film,
they often called me for small roles.
For example, in The Blonde from Peking with Mireille Darc,
where I had to kill an American,
as luck would have it.
I started to work and earn a pretty good living.
And then, one day, an Italian producer came to Paris
looking for an actress to play the new female Tarzan.
He discovered me on the cover of Cinémonde.
The next day, I did a screen test without much hope,
because there were about fifty girls
each more beautiful than the next.
Two days later, the production called me
to tell me that I was
chosen to be Luana, girl of the jungle.
Oh, I was so happy.
But once on set,
I had to pet a black panther and a lion.
So, I was scared, really scared.
And then, I had to swing from vine to vine
over the wild beasts in the jungle at Cinecittà.
What an adventure.
I had an offer to sign on for three more films.
I refused despite the attachment I felt
for the sweet life in Rome,
surrounded by friends and my Italian lover,
Angelo Infanti.
But I had to return to Paris.
I was so happy to have made a lot of money
so mom could buy a restaurant, the Jade Star.
The star of Luana, Girl of the Jungle
is... By the way, what's your name?
Mei-Chen.
- What? - Mei-Chen?
You don't just meet François Chalais like that.
But the appointment was made, my heart beating,
I don't know why, I range his doorbell.
This man who came back from Vietnam, me who was born there,
so we were already connected without knowing each other.
HANOI 1967
"HANOI UNDER THE BOMBS" FRANÇOIS CHALAIS - 1967
I'm talking to you about North Vietnam.
For a month,
my colleagues Jean-Pierre Janssen, Dominique Bozzi and myself
had the privilege of being the only Western television crew
to be able to enter this country
since what is commonly called the escalation.
The escalation, meaning the total war
that the United States of America is waging
against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Beyond the noise, the fury and the passions,
our goal was to show how, in life as in death,
this small nation of under 19 million fights.
Our testimony was made independently
and with complete objectivity.
We were there, here is what we saw and heard.
When the North Vietnam film started,
I was fascinated by his gaze, his voice,
by the strength of this man.
I fell in love with him
watching him on TV,
which had never happened to me before.
The image of the man of cinema, of the Cannes Film Festival,
which I did not like, suddenly fascinated me
with this report from North Vietnam.
This is daily life in Hanoi.
News was seen through his major shows,
and François Chalais was a pioneer.
Demanding is the key word for this era.
There was a high demand for quality.
Which meant that little by little,
all of France started to wait for
this show that truly brought something.
The children who are here...
These children were burned.
They were burned...
By the... because after the bombing,
the houses burn,
and even though they're sheltered,
the fire is still intense.
Were they already in the shelter?
- The whole family? - The whole family.
It's the whole family.
How long ago was that?
There was something extra, the emotion.
Despite trying to stay impassive,
there was great emotion.
The report really resonated.
He conveyed all the distress he saw.
Not only did we see it,
but viewers were shocked that day.
When I saw the report on North Vietnam,
I thought, "It's amazing how he shows the children,
"how he shows these people at war,
"how he shows my country, how he speaks."
And suddenly, I was moved.
I said, "I must meet this man
"who saw my country two months ago.
"I've been away for so long,
"he must talk to me, I must touch him."
To me, he was a god.
The mysteries of the Orient
have always fascinated me. Tell us a little more about yourself.
You know, it's quite complicated. I was born in Vietnam.
He had jeans, a blue T-shirt, blue eyes.
And then... this happened.
He looked at me, I looked at him,
he said, "You're moving in already?"
Because I had a bag, I had just taken some photos.
And he asked me, "How old are you?"
So, I was so young,
I gave my Vietnamese age.
Because the Vietnamese age
is two years older, you know.
And I told him, "Yes, 18 years old."
But it wasn't true.
And he said to me, "But you are much too young for me,
"come back in three years."
It's true, we had a mutual crush.
Because François, it seems that it was for him...
He went to Venezuela and he wrote me a long letter
and he said to me, "It's strange,
"I felt like I've known you for 1,000 years.
"You are truly the woman of my life."
The people who play a role in your life are...
are predestined for you, obviously.
"Houses await us," Cocteau said, I think,
"for separated souls."
Souls wait for us and for you.
I believe that what happened between them
must have happened at first sight, at the first meeting.
There's a lot unsaid.
Something is forged at that moment,
that binds
and can't be undone later.
The first time I met François,
who was returning from North Vietnam,
he showed me several items that he brought back.
So, a small piece of an American plane.
It is a piece of an American plane
that I picked up in Vietnam,
in a place called Hoa Binh, north of Hanoi.
It was shot down by farmers, with a musket, on June 6, 1967.
But this little piece of metal has another story.
The first time that the woman who would become my wife,
but wasn't yet, came to visit me,
she stumbled upon this little piece of metal.
She read the inscription and saw "Hoa Binh,"
she said, "That's unbelievable."
I said, "Yes, it's unbelievable that people with a musket
"could shoot down an American warplane."
She said, "Not that, but where did you find it?"
I said, "In Hoa Binh."
And she said, "That's where I was born."
This is one of the many reasons why I don't believe in coincidence.
The day we first met,
François explained to me what the American war really was,
the heroism of a country
that would have as much trouble overcoming its inevitable victory
as it would have fighting its battles.
His speech was so vivid
that it felt like he was still there
and I had just joined him in Hanoi.
All the French people who lived there,
whatever their opinions, their situation,
loved this country in their own way.
We integrated, whether we liked it or not,
whether we supported the American war,
against it, against the Viet Minh, for Ho Chi Minh, etc.,
we became inhabitants of this country,
no matter how briefly we stayed.
So I think something was forming.
If this French officer took in Mei-Chen and Mei-Chen's mother,
it's also because he was worthy of love,
that he understood Vietnam.
It's not possible,
my father was a journalist, and so many years later,
I fall in love with a man who is a journalist,
the only journalist who went to Vietnam.
PHAM VAN DONG PRIME MINISTER OF NORTH VIETNAM
FRANCOIS CHALAIS
What an emotion for me.
We found Cao, 30 years later,
the man who guided François during the war,
in December 1967.
So many memories.
Around 11:15 p.m. on July 20, 1966,
two F105 planes from the US Air Force flew over this area,
coming across a truck on the road
and swept in to fire at this truck.
We immediately took the gun and ran into a small trench.
At this moment, the plane was flying very low.
Meaning it was 200 meters.
And with a simple ordinary gun like this,
Together, they fired and the plane was hit by the bullets
and crashed and burned!
There were hundreds of gates and temples,
and everything was bombed by the Americans.
Some have been rebuilt.
Here we are at the lake.
"On October 26, 1967,
"here, the Vietnamese, in Hanoi,
"shot down the plane
"with pilot John Sydney McCain."
Under what circumstances were you shot down?
I was flying over Hanoi,
bombing the city.
HANOI UNDER THE BOMBS FRANÇOIS CHALAIS - 1967
I was hit by a missile.
My plane went straight down.
I tried to operate the ejection seat,
it broke both my arms and a leg,
so I fell into a lake.
I was captured by the North Vietnamese
who took me to the hospital,
where I almost died.
The doctors operated on my arm, my arms,
and other doctors operated on my leg.
What day was it?
October 25.
Now you're a prisoner. How are you treated here?
I'm treated well by the doctors and the people.
How's the food?
It's not like in Paris, but it's okay.
The bombs fell. The bombs fall randomly.
Yes, randomly. How can you aim accurately
from a plane at an altitude of 1,500 meters?
A plane that takes only seven seconds
to fly over the entire expanse of the capital.
HANOI WAR MUSEUM DECEMBER 1967
Against North Vietnam, apart from the atomic bomb,
all kinds of bombs were used.
This one, for example, has small wings
that let it whirl at chest height.
And there are those infamous cluster bombs
whose existence some still deny
because their effects are so monstrous.
I've seen them, here they are.
It consists of a mother bomb
containing several balls,
each filled with steel pellets.
When it hits the ground, the mother bomb explodes
and 90,000 metal pellets
are randomly scattered
tearing through everything in their path.
In one district of central Hanoi,
I counted, one next to another,
153 destroyed houses.
This one, for example, we passed by
and went inside.
HANOI UNDER THE BOMBS FRANÇOIS CHALAIS - 1967
This is my daughter!
He was a wolf, a bear even.
At his house, there was a photo of the dog,
a photo of Hemingway
and a quote from Sacha Guitry
pinned to the wall, "Always marry a pretty woman
"if you want someone to take her off your hands one day."
And I said, "You're very misogynistic."
I said, "You don't have any photos of actresses?"
He said, "Oh, no, you know, actresses and me..."
I said, "You are famous with the Cannes Film Festival,
"with all the stars."
He started talking to me about Vietnam,
and it was something very, very strong between us.
Right away.
Me, right away,
I knew he would be important to me.
But something so strong that instead of staying an hour,
he stayed several hours with me,
and he already wanted me to know everything about his life
the moment he opened the door to me.
It's incredible.
And at one point, I was thirsty,
and he said to me, "Do you want me to go get you a glass of water?"
I told him, "No, I'll go get it myself."
I went into his kitchen
and saw mismatched crystal glasses,
I said, "When I move in, I'll change all these glasses."
What is it that after two hours
in this man's life,
I already wanted to change everything?
And he later told me that when he saw me,
he already knew that it was for life.
He obviously
introduced her to social life,
he introduced her to the most important men:
Malraux, politicians, the greatest writers,
the greatest artists.
At 16 and a half, he said to me,
"You're going to have dinner with André Malraux."
Well, I said, "But what am I going to do?
"What am I going to say to André Malraux?"
He said to me, "It doesn't matter, get dressed and come.
"And you'll see, you'll see it born...
"Even if you don't understand everything, listen, watch,
"absorb and take it all in."
And then he started,
he was a bit of my Pygmalion too, François Chalais.
And later, he would say, "Come on, let's go,
"we're going to Fellini's.
"We're going to see my friend Claudia Cardinale, Sophia Loren, all that.
And I was amazed. I thought, "This can't be real,
"I'm living life at full speed."
I found marital balance,
a sentimental balance that I wish for everyone.
I met my wife by chance,
or rather, she met me,
because she had seen a show that I had done on Vietnam.
She is Vietnamese, as many people know.
She wanted someone who knew this country,
who came from there, to talk to her about her country.
We met and we have never left each other.
And it's been many years now.
It's the best gift,
along with my birth, that Heaven gave me.
After an experience that he did not like to talk about,
François wasn't thinking about marriage.
As for me,
despite all the proposals that I received,
I was too young to really consider it.
"You are made for each other,"
the filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville had told us.
"Ignoring it would be a disaster. Get married.
"Even if it only brings you a year or two of happiness,
"it will be worth it."
By pushing us to make this decision,
Melville, the first witness at our wedding,
had just staged a beautiful scene.
It was June 5, 1970.
We had already been living together for two years.
But the seemingly trivial act of legalizing our situation
gave our love an additional dimension.
It was as if we had made it more lasting and more beautiful.
By marrying me,
François adopted and protected my Vietnamese family.
Having never forgotten the affection
he had for his nation and for himself,
Prince Norodom Sihanouk
would always treat François as a close friend,
to the point of wishing
we'd honeymoon at his place in Cambodia.
Unfortunately, two months later, there was a coup d'état
and Prince Norodom Sihanouk was overthrown,
so our honeymoon,
we did not spend it here, in Phnom Penh,
nor at the temples of Angkor, but in Venice.
François was tall, distinguished,
he had class, as they say.
And Mei-Chen was a charming woman.
They made a wonderful couple.
She was gentle and beautiful.
And the two of them complemented each other wonderfully.
There was only one thing I didn't know,
a country even more foreign than others, and that country,
was private late.
And one day, I discovered it. I discovered it very late.
But maybe it was the right time for me to discover it,
when I felt less like running around.
I realized I had never truly said "I love you."
The other women I have lived with are convinced
that they know me because they have lived with me.
I think they are the people
who know me the least,
because I wasn't myself with them.
She knows what I am like.
For the first time perhaps, a woman knows how I am.
For the first time perhaps, a man knows how Mei-Chen is.
If I hadn't met the right person,
I don't think I would have stopped.
I'm a loner who isn't afraid of solitude.
We must not waste a second of our lives now.
There's not a second to lose.
Not a second to lose from the moment we're born.
He could be
delicately impertinent in his questions.
He also disliked crowds.
He was very reserved.
He was rather cold.
JEAN-MICHEL DARROIS PARIS LAWYER
And probably, if Mei-Chen hadn't been there,
he would have most certainly sunk into solitude.
It's wonderful to spend your life,
and it's not over, with someone,
who doesn't put you on a pedestal,
who shares their youth. She has plenty of it.
I really learned things,
and I owe a lot to François, though he wasn't a mentor,
he didn't give me advice.
Definitely not.
François never said, "Do this, do that."
He asked, "Have you ever read a newspaper, Mei-Chen?"
I said, "No."
He said to me, "But you should read a newspaper,
"not just the newspapers where you are in a photo."
Laughing, with a lot of irony and humor.
And then, one day, he said to me,
"You know, you should read On Love, by Stendhal."
He said to me, "Come to Venice, bring Balzac,
"read about A Woman of Thirty."
He introduced things gradually.
We are so close to each other
that I thought, "It's a problem for me,
"not for her, that we're not the same age,
"because there are things we didn't experience together."
At one point, I said, "I don't want
"us to make separate memories, like separate beds.
What I tried to do with her
was to take her to places I lived
so she could know the things
and meet the people I loved before
and she didn't know.
At one point, she said, "But why?
"Why are you telling me all this?
I told her, "Because you are you,
"and I don't care about the others."
It's not true, I don't completely not care about others,
but she comes first.
We've traveled so much together,
been to Egypt nine times,
visited Indonesia, Malaysia,
and traveled all over the world.
THE ALCANTARA GORGES SICILY
YEMEN
MOUNT FUJI - JAPAN
CIRCEO - SABAUDIA - ITALY
TAORMINA - SICILY
VENICE
THE SEYCHELLES
ROME
All these travels inspired François
for his books.
He wrote 15, including Les chocolats de l'entracte,
a million copies sold,
which allowed us to buy our apartment in Neuilly.
Two won prestigious Académie française awards:
Garry and The Landing, adapted for TV.
THE LANDING
FRANÇOIS CHALAIS: "MEI CHEN INSPIRES EACH OF MY BOOKS."
THE CHALAIS: "WE HAD A LOT OF FUN WRITING."
So, let's not overanalyze
and do cheap psychoanalysis.
It's true that there's a big age difference
with François Chalais,
but it's not like she was looking for her father in Paris,
no, we can't say that.
But I sense a great sensitivity in this area.
Is she photogenic?
I think few women are more photogenic than Mei-Chen.
She has something in her eyes.
I love that people love her.
If people didn't like my wife, I wouldn't understand them, t
they'd be strange.
I'm not trying to distract myself, it's true.
I'm a little ashamed to say it, but I'm a happy man.
CANNES
The first time I walked up the steps with François
was in 1969.
I was a little girl, clinging to his arm.
I barely knew...
I wasn't comfortable,
and he told me, "Don't worry, I'm right here,
"you'll see, everything will be fine."
Walking the red carpet with him,
I was very impressed.
I think I was more impressed
walking the Cannes steps
next to François Chalais
than maybe the biggest stars of the time.
And then my husband was on the jury in 1978
with Alan Pakula, Liv Ullmann,
Kontchalovski, Franco Brusati,
Harry Saltzman, the producer.
He was on the jury, and we stayed at the Carlton.
I remember very well having a drink with Jules Dassin,
with Melina Mercouri.
We had lunch here with Yves Montand,
at this Carlton restaurant too.
We mingled with all these stars,
but they felt like family.
The one who impressed me the most was still my husband.
In May 1996, it was the last time
I climbed the steps with François Chalais,
and I saw how, next to me,
he was very weakened by illness.
I told him, "Hold onto my arm,
"I have the strength today
"and we'll climb the steps together."
This is our last image of François and me
at the Cannes Festival.
François Chalais gave a lot of support to the Cannes Festival.
Undeniably, we realized that it was indeed
about interviewing starlets,
sometimes stars,
mostly stars rather than starlets,
but still, that was part of it.
The festival needed to be heavier, in the good sense of the term,
with interviews like the ones he did
in remarkable French
and always with a sense of imagery.
What do you think?
I think you would really have to be abnormal to be against it.
Not for that, no.
No, to sunbathe.
There's sunshine in Italy,
a certain freedom,
you can walk in the streets.
Together, we lose something precious,
the freedom of a private citizen.
Do you feel them all the time?
Yes.
We feel them a lot. Then we get used to it.
Today, the festival is known throughout the world,
but it has no real presence in the press.
There's no one,
like in François' time,
who could represent this festival.
He enjoyed, I think,
teaching her little by little,
always gently and without harshness...
JEAN-MICHEL DARROIS PARIS LAWYER
...how to behave
with these very important and complex people
they might meet.
And it's true, it never stopped,
this walk through the days,
the landscapes and encounters.
Brought to life by the most unexpected people,
as if placed there by luck to smile at me,
protect me, and love me.
JACQUES CHABAN-DELMAS PRIME MINISTER 1969-1972
JACQUES CHIRAC PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC
LIONEL JOSPIN PRIME MINISTER
SYLVIANE AGACINSKI ACADEMICIAN
FROM WAR TO PEACE
This little Vietnamese girl became a great lady of Paris.
It is not surprising
that she captivated so many people around her,
including some of the most famous.
For example, she was Kurosawa's guest in Japan.
Exceptionally, the painter Balthus,
opened the doors of his studio to her.
She was friends with Prince Norodom Sihanouk
and Princess Moneang.
Same thing with Jean Marais.
When he met her, Salvador Dali drew her.
Lino Ventura and Sergio Leone were among her close friends,
as were Federico Fellini and his wife Giulietta Masina,
the unforgettable actress in La Strada.
Michèle Morgan and President Edgar Faure.
Sophia Loren and filmmaker Terence Young.
Yul Brynner and Georges Chakiris. Marcello Mastroianni.
We could name dozens,
even hundreds.
Robert Hossein, Claudia Cardinale,
the filmmaker Ettore Scola.
A SPECIAL DAY
My husband, François Chalais, had made me a promise.
He had said, "No matter what,
"I will take you to Vietnam."
But he was already very ill,
he went to the hospital and told me to pack.
Everyone said, "It's madness."
He was so unwell that leaving,
meant dying.
Leaving was dying.
But he told me, "I made you this promise,
"and no matter what, I want to keep it.
"I want to come back with you and see Vietnam with you."
And unfortunately,
it's a trip that we couldn't do together.
We talked about it, my husband and I.
François didn't want life-prolonging treatment.
He wanted to choose his death,
just as he had chosen the freedom in his life
and wanted to leave with dignity.
He said to me as he left,
"The greatest proof of my love for you,
"is leaving today."
And he told me,
"The greatest proof of your love for me,
"is fighting, being brave,
being strong, and above all, free."
After the first glance between Mei-Chen and François,
the couple shared 28 years of happiness,
through travels, romance, novels, fiction and reality.
After 28 years, Mei-Chen found herself alone in 1996.
TF1 EVENING NEWS
Ladies and gentlemen, good evening.
Here are the headlines for Thursday, May 2.
The death of François Chalais.
A voice. A passion for cinema, the media, television.
He will always be the man of Cannes, he was 76 years old.
FRANÇOIS CHALAIS, FRIEND OF THE STARS
GOODBYE, FRANÇOIS CHALAIS
SEVEN PERSONALITIES WHO HAVE MARKED THE FRENCH AUDIOVISUAL INDUSTRY
THE PROMISES
I told him, "I met you because of Vietnam,
"I will come back to Vietnam for you."
And I came back a few months after his death,
a year after his death,
to make my pilgrimage in Vietnam.
On the South China Sea,
we first went to Indonesia, the Philippines,
Manila, Canton, Hong Kong.
François was unwell,
and I told him, "Listen,
"tomorrow we must reach Ha Long Bay."
Our trip was planned for Ha Long Bay, Hanoi,
Hue and Ninh Binh.
All the places where François did his reports
29 years earlier.
He always told me, "One day, I will take you to Hong Kong,
"and especially Ha Long Bay."
It was our dream.
And we were unable to realize this dream.
It is something in my life that...
in any case, for Vietnam, which ends here,
with François, before François.
And after, Ha Long Bay will be after François.
A year after his death,
you discover this China Sea,
these stone sentinels by the thousands here.
You wanted to be with him.
He is present with you despite everything,
in your heart and in your memory.
It is a pilgrimage, a gesture of love.
What does this journey mean for Mei-Chen Chalais?
It's a...
First, it is a gesture of love in memory of François,
because he was supposed to make this film with me,
this famous Ha Long Bay, this famous Hanoi.
It's a painful pilgrimage,
since it is through his book,
through this situation,
that I discover this Vietnam that he knew better than me.
And it is, in a way, to exorcise something,
to try to heal this painful wound.
Did he talk to you about Ha Long Bay?
Did this Ha Long Bay represent
something symbolic for him?
Yes, because it was, for him,
firstly, he couldn't see it during the Vietnam War.
It was forbidden, he couldn't.
And he always wanted to take me to my country.
He wanted us to travel together.
He wanted me to see what he saw,
to share the same memories,
so we wouldn't have separate trips and memories.
But he didn't know Ha Long Bay,
he wanted to discover it with me.
Ha Long Bay
is a dream place for lovers.
It was my dream to come back here with my husband,
François Chalais, but unfortunately,
he passed away then
and I could not fulfill my dream.
So, it has always been my missed rendezvous in Vietnam.
During my trip to Vietnam,
seeing this little boy,
I remembered a passage from one of François' poignant books.
It was about his encounter with a small child,
abandoned under the bombs during the war,
who he held in his arms.
And he wrote,
"He stopped crying and laughed,
"that's when it became unbearable.
"But why this blind trust
"he had in me?
"I knew I didn't deserve it,
"since I could do nothing for him.
"But he had chosen me in this terrible darkness in broad daylight.
"He had adopted me, this orphan,
"at the end of the horror,
"and his laughter comforted and tore me apart."
From this trip to North Vietnam,
I realize in turn that the image of this little boy
will never leave me.
I also remember the exceptional interview
of François Chalais with John McCain.
What is your name?
Lieutenant Commander John Sydney McCain.
It's a very famous name.
Prisoner in 1967
and released six years after the Paris Accords in 1973,
two years before the end of the American war,
on April 30, 1975.
McCain, who was deeply affected by the Vietnam War,
François, who was deeply affected by the Vietnam War.
As a child of the Vietnam War,
the three of us, these intertwined fates
and whatever John McCain's future,
this unique meeting will remain exceptional.
And maybe we'll say,
"If a French journalist, passing by,
"hadn't stubbornly asked and said,
'I won't leave North Vietnam
'without an American prisoner, '
"what would have become of McCain?"
I don't know.
But at the same time, I also think that an interview showing
an American prisoner released from prison
crying in front of François Chalais' camera.
And something happened between McCain and François.
Moreover, in his biography,
John McCain pays tribute to François Chalais.
AFTER FRANCOIS CHALAIS' INTERVIEW,
I KNEW IT WOULD CAUSE A BUZZ AT HOME
AND THAT THE VIETNAMESE COULD NO LONGER KILL ME.
JOHN MCCAIN
FROM THE MEMOIR "THE FAITH OF MY FATHERS"
THE FAITH OF MY FATHERS
I was inspired by the man, the writer,
and the great reporter
and I knew everything he had in him,
and I wanted to share it with the world.
Mei-Chen Chalais received
the Legion of Honor from the Minister of Culture,
Frédéric Mitterrand, in 2010.
This award honors her loyalty to her mother,
her roots, her husband
through her work,
notably the creation of the film award named after her.
When I talk about François Chalais,
it is of course because this great film buff,
this great critic, this great reporter,
this great cinema advocate is very dear to me
for his cult shows like Reflets de Cannes and Cinépanorama,
and I always,
we always have in our minds,
his voice, his tone,
his unique phrasing
forever linked to the spirit of the Festival
and to the history of cinema.
When I talk about François Chalais,
it's also because your life is tied to his.
You knew how to honor François Chalais
and keep his memory alive,
finding the most inventive and relevant way
by always seeking the light.
This is how you created the François Chalais Young Reporter Award.
I also think of the awards that, since 1997,
are given annually at the Cannes Festival,
to a director for capturing the world's reality,
as François Chalais himself did so well.
JURY OF THE FRANCOIS CHALAIS PRIZE
Let's now go to Cannes
where, last night, the first François Chalais Prize was given.
It was the director Ademir Kenović,
director of the film The Perfect Circle,
who received this prize from Brigitte Fossey, as you can see.
The jury is chaired in particular by Sophia Loren and Alain Delon.
The film was shot in Sarajevo
and premiered at the Directors' Fortnight.
This award aims to honor a young filmmaker
who captures the world's reality.
Very moved, Mrs. Chalais tries to read a message from Sophia Loren,
but she can't.
I will take over, because there are words
that are sometimes difficult to read.
"My dear Mei-Chen, my dear friends,
"I am truly sorry that I cannot be with you this evening
"to present this third François Chalais award.
"And I feel, I'm even sadder
"because in this month of May,
"I'm thinking a lot about François.
"He was a true friend to me for more than 30 years,
"and the great cinema man that he was
"was crucial at the start of my career."
Sorry, I'll take the floor again. François wouldn't have liked...
...because he wanted me to be strong.
THE OTHER A FILM BY YOUSSEF CHAHINE
WEST BEIRUT
KIPPUR
MADE IN THE USA
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES
ONCE YOU'RE BORN YOU CAN NO LONGER HIDE
DAYS OF GLORY
HORSES OF GOD
TIMBUKTU
120 BEATS PER MINUTE
SON OF SAUL
A HIDDEN LIFE
BOY FROM HEAVEN
KIDNAPPED
FRANÇOIS CHALAIS PRIZE
Cinema is said to be a family
but it's also a family of friendships,
people who believed in me.
And in a way,
it's a story of love, of course,
but also, in a way, of friendships.
AWARD CEREMONY FOR THE FRANÇOIS CHALAIS YOUNG REPORTER AWARD
Thank you to all my friends, the jury members,
to those
who helped me
and supported me since my awards.
JURY OF THE FRANÇOIS CHALAIS YOUNG REPORTER AWARD
JURY OF THE FRANÇOIS CHALAIS YOUNG REPORTER AWARD - 2024
The Chalais name has not disappeared from the screens.
Mei-Chen has produced more than 200 documentaries,
and her films are preserved by her husband's archives,
François Chalais.
His Mémoires du cinéma archives
captivate audiences worldwide.
When I return to Vietnam,
it is a land of pain, but also of joy.
The women's citadel
was François' favorite temple.
More than ever, here,
I can't help but remember these words
he wrote to me one day in 1988,
"Did we meet God on this timeless journey,
"in search of ourselves?
"I don't know.
"What I am sure of, on the other hand,
"is that if God doesn't exist,
"my love will invent him to watch over you."
Anthony Hoang Subtitling: TransPerfect Media