Highly Recommended
Ash Mayfair’s controversial feature is a hauntingly shot and moody affair that envelops the viewer from start to finish, commenting on patriarchal structure of today through the lens of 19th century Vietnam.
Director Ash Mayfair’s (Nguyen Phuong Anh) debut feature arrives at festivals around the world on the heels of controversy in its native Vietnam. Pulled from cinemas for a classification review after outcries about its 13-year-old star being involved in suggestive scenes, it’s one of the most awarded Vietnamese films of recent years.
Set in 19th century rural Vietnam, the 14-year-old May (Nguyen Phuong Tra My) arrives to become the third wife of a wealthy landowner. While the two senior wives, Lao (Nguyen Nhu Quynh Le) and Xuan (Mai Thu Huong), welcome her with talk of sex, childbirth, and parenting, May still finds herself in a hotbed of secrets and generational anxiety.
From the opening shots, a still river cut like silk by vivid red boats, Mayfair and cinematographer Chananun Chotrungroj (Pop Aye) approach their subjects with a delicate and intimate photographic style. Throughout the picture, a recurring motif of caterpillars, cocoons, and butterflies are shot through this micro lens, perhaps suggesting this closed system of wives and lives is part of an inevitable circle of life. Nants ingonyama!
Which, on the broadest level, is the thematic thread that follows May throughout this film. Sex, death, and punishment are linked at every turn. May is initially a passive observer – glimpsing sex, unwed pregnancies, and their consequences – while not partaking. Her desire for something else increases when she also becomes pregnant, and shifts the relationship between her and the other wives.
The young Nguyen Phuong Tra My is remarkable in the lead role, carrying much of the emotional weight along with being our window into this world. A dramatic counterpoint exists in the landowner’s unstable son, who picks and chooses what he wants out of his lot in life while carrying on an affair with one of the other wives. Through him it becomes clear that, despite the beauty of the facade, this is a movie about women in prison. It’s no fluke that the bright yellow buds of deadly nightshade provide both a gorgeous backdrop and a constant sense of doom.
THE THIRD WIFE approaches its ending with a certain amount of foreboding, but its message is clear throughout. Mayfair is looking at late 19th century Vietnam through the lens of #MeToo, and similar social movements, to comment on the state of now. Recalling the work of her mentor Tran Anh Hung, Mayfair has delivered a powerful debut that marks her as a new voice in cinema.
2018 | Vietnam| DIRECTOR: Richard Lowenstein | WRITERS: Ash Mayfair | CAST: Lê Vũ Long, Nguyễn Phương Trà My, Trần Nữ Yên Khê | DISTRIBUTOR: Potential Films (AUS)| RUNNING TIME: 112 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 6 June 2019 (SFF), 4 July 2019 (AUS)
