- Guy: Give me Le Guen.
- L'Admiral: No.
- Guy: What will you do with him?
- L'Admiral: I'm awaiting orders from Paris.
- Guy: Let me question him. What he knows about the communist networks and leaders is of major interest to us.
- L'Admiral: Three points, Mr. Asselin. One: Le Guen doesn't talk. He hasn't spoken since his arrest. Not even to my chief of staff - his classmate. Two: If I hand him over to you, he might talk. But I'd rather not. We know your methods. Three: Le Guen is a sailor. His case will be tried by sailors. Any relevant information will be passed along to you.
- Guy: Thanks. Another example of Navy-Police cooperation. That's what makes empires great.
- Eliane: She had made her choice. And I didn't want to see it, I didn't want to understand. She loved him. He was her first love. Nothing would stop her.
- Mme. Minh Tam: You have to forget this man, Lili. I'll never understand French love stories. They're all about madness, fury, suffering. They're similar to our war stories. You know the secret. I've told you already.
- Eliane: Yes, I know. Indifference.
- Yvette: Feel superior all you want. The truth is no one likes you here. Even trees. If they were honest, they wouldn't grow.
- Yvette: Your appearance is misleading. Sure, you're beautiful. But I'll tell you, beauty means nothing without inner beauty.
- Yvette: [removes Raymond's hand fondling her breast] Stop it. In your condition.
- Raymond: You're driving me crazy. I just can't help it. We haven't done it in a week.
- Yvette: And what do you call what we do during nap time?
- Raymond: It's not the same.
- Yvette: A pregnancy during the monsoon season? No, thanks. You won't carry it.
- [first lines]
- Eliane: I had never left Indochina. Camille's hand was icy in mine. She had just lost her parents. They had been my dearest friends. Their plane disappeared at sea, off the coast of Cap Saint-Jacques. I didn't have children. She didn't have parents anymore. The little princess of Annam became my daughter.
- Eliane: Maybe this is what youth is all about. Believing the world is made of inseparable things. Men and women, mountains and plains, human beings and gods, Indochina and France.
- Jean-Baptiste: Aren't you embarrassed by the way they look at you?
- Eliane: Why should I be? They're my coolies.
- Jean-Baptiste: They're men too.
- Eliane: I'm their boss, that's all.
- Jean-Baptiste: Commanding men is a man's job.
- Eliane: That's what men usually say.
- Jean-Baptiste: You're like my father. He always said, "Let yourself go. Follow your instincts." He'd disappear chasing his passions and follies. He sowed nothing but unhappiness around him. I'll never be that man. I want to preserve myself! No one will get inside my head and steal my soul, no one! Not even eternal Asia, no one!
- Jean-Baptiste: What about you? What did you dream about?
- Eliane: I wanted to be a boy.
- Jean-Baptiste: And now?
- Eliane: No need to dream. I have everything I like here.
- Eliane: I looked for you everywhere last night. Talk to me, Jean-Baptiste. Say something.
- Jean-Baptiste: I'll always need time for myself. Days for myself. Weeks for myself. Only to myself. Do you understand? It's the same thing for you. We are two persons.
- Eliane: I need you. You're part of my life now. I need your voice, your softness, your hands. Protect me. I need you to protect me.
- Jean-Baptiste: Stop. You are not this pleading woman. I want to experience the world. Not a plot of land no bigger than a tomb. I want to discover the world.
- Eliane: I wanted to protect Camille. She knew nothing of my life, of the men I met, of those I loved. I had flings with men in transit. The kind that doesn't leave traces.
- Eliane: I tried to save her from you. I don't want her to believe suffering is part of love. Good night.
- Jean-Baptiste: Save her from me? You just want revenge. You can't stand freedom. It threatens you.
- Eliane: Let go of me.
- Jean-Baptiste: You can't let others live.
- Eliane: Let go.
- Jean-Baptiste: You want monopoly on life - giving away little bits once in a while. Me, Camille, your coolies! It's terrible to be this way. What do you want? Smother your daughter like your father smothered you? You treat people like trees. You buy them and you bleed them dry. You drain them! You're vultures!
- Eliane: Life continued as before. Footsteps in dead leaves, sap oozing from the wounded trees, and what I like the most, that others don't: the smell of rubber.
- Eliane: Young people like Tanh will lead this country. We have to help create an Indo-Chinese elite.
- Mme. Minh Tam: We are the elite, because we are rich.
- Eliane: Tanh is an intellectual. He's probably not interested in business.
- Mme. Minh Tam: He should stop dreaming.
- Hebrard: Mockery, my friend. We're deep in mockery. Either you fight it, either you do like me, revel in it. You could become a hero here, but no one will ever know. It will be like a drop in this jade green ocean. But it will be your drop of water.
- Jean-Baptiste: Tell me about our presence here.
- Hebrard: Nothing. We're ghosts of the empire.
- Eliane: I often dreamed of her at night. I don't remember static dreams. I saw her moving, softly, through those mobile landscapes. I felt like they entered her body through her eyes, like blood. I thought, "This is it. Indochina is in her."
- Tanh: Obedience made slaves out of us. The French taught me the words "freedom" and "equality". That's how I'll fight them.
- Castellani: This damn country! Can't this old monkey help us out? Instead of just bowing.
- Minh: He's bowing because you're a respectable man. A white man.
- Yvette: [singing] She curls up in a ball, And nibbles her knees, The rubber girl, Oh, the things you can do with her, She hugs you, And you turn to mush, She's so lush, You'll be crushed...
- Yvette: [singing] Like a marshmallow on a wood fire, The snake-woman has nothing on me, I can do cartwheels, I can pull my cheeks, I can jump like a monkey, I tease you, I look at you, With my belly button...
- Hebrard: Once a month, there's a celebration. A big celebration. The slave market. Workers are recruited in the northern part of the country. Volunteers. Anyway, they have no choice. They're too hungry. We serve France here. We bring the volunteers here. Under your strict supervision, southern buyers come here for workers for their plantations in Cochinchina. You have nothing to do, just be here.
- Eliane: Sometimes my despair lessens. It's like it's evaporated, gone. Sometimes it overwhelms me. Swear you're not hiding anything from me.
- Guy: Nothing's changed. We're looking everywhere for her. Our informers are going crazy. We follow every lead, but they're going nowhere. She's become a legend. Joan of Arc of Indochina.
- Eliane: You're nothing. You're nothing but words. You're worse than a coward. You follow people. You look, you sniff, you talk. Do you still wonder why I've never wanted to sleep with you? Because I didn't want to have your child! Women don't want to be pregnant with words!
- Guy: The innocent are kicked out. The guilty will be freed. Drink, my friends. Drink so I can forget my misfortunes.
- Guy: Con Dao Prison is the world's greatest communist factory. You get in as a criminal, a murderer, a prostitute, a nationalist - and you get out as a Marxist!
- Eliane: I heard you're in a bad mood?
- Shen: Tomorrow, fire Mr. Émile's new girl.
- Eliane: Fire Hoa? Why?
- Shen: Too greedy, too expensive. She's a bad girl. Her mouth is too big. She's always asking for more. Today, it's more rice. Tomorrow, it's going to be pig, then buffalo. I know many girls who'd take her place. They're very nice and have smaller mouths.
- Guy: You have no balls. Your pay, your bonuses, smoking and hooking up with submissive congaies, that, you know how to do. But when it comes to having ideas, nothing. It's because of sheep like you that France will lose the empire. And it'll only be fair. I feel like it's me against Asia. I'm tired.
- Mme. Minh Tam: I just got back from the school. It's a disaster, Lili. Camille has been quarantined. The other students are calling her names: "Little Congaie", "Chink". The headmistress was forced to isolate her.
- Castellani: That chink may be your daughter, but she's also a terrorist and a communist! I saw hatred in her eyes.