Directing
Newly-married Rebecca leaves her husband's Alsatian bed on her prized motorbike - symbol of freedom and escape - to visit her lover in Heidelberg. En route she indulges in psychedelic reveries as she relives her changing relationship with the two men.
In transit to Saigon, Jean Dartigues wants to see Nicole, whom he once knew and secretly loved. The young woman, now a widow, is a high school teacher. However, the police have just uncovered a story of arms and drug trafficking and are forbidding passengers to leave the airport. With the help of a bartender, Jean manages to get into town. At school, no Nicole, but he meets a young Vietnamese girl who offers to help him with his research. One thing leading to another, one adventure leading to another, Jean finds himself involved in the trafficking operation, first unwittingly, then of his own free will, when he realizes that Van, the young Vietnamese woman involved, is risking her own life. With the help of the girl's family and a sympathetic policeman, Jean manages to have the gang arrested, and, taking the plane back to France - very temporarily - he entrusts Van, who has become his most precious possession, to Nicole, who has finally been found and is somewhat melancholy.
An arms smuggler organization uses a pirate television station to spread dissention among representatives in an international conference in Portugal. A French diplomat travels to Macao, hoping to locate a sexy spy who had stayed in Lisbon.
Under the mundane guise of a public relations firm, Singrid Karaman is actually running an intelligence network. Her new mission is to foil an upcoming coup attempt in the African country of Myassaland, and to recover the large stock of diamonds that have fallen into the hands of the mercenaries behind the plot. She instructs a former Nazi, Eric, to form a shock commando and her assistant, Carol, to contact the mercenary leaders, Commandant St Robert and Captain Tarquier. Although Tarquier is very suspicious, St Robert agrees to go aboard Ingrid's yacht.
This film, which was to be directed by Pascal-Angot, is characteristic of the communication war in these times of violent military conflicts. It presents a panorama of the benefits of the singular Portuguese presence, which harmoniously rubs shoulders with peoples and cultures: Macao, its cathedral, junks and casinos; the dances of the Timorese; Cape Verde and its morna; the Tchiloli Theatre of São Tomé; the riches of Angola and the development of Mozambique. And several sequences expose at length the Portuguese military power, especially in Guinea-Bissau and Angola – while a part of these countries is actually under control of the separatists. The film is punctuated by the words of Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano, who replaced Salazar in 1968: “These terrorist movements did not appear spontaneously, they originate in a neighbouring territory, and they would have disappeared if the help of the neighbouring powers had stopped. The people of our territories are fighting them.”
