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The Third Wife

Directed by Ash Mayfair

2018

Vietnam

112 minutes

Unclassified 15+

Book Tickets

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Set in late 19th century Vietnam, Ash Mayfair’s exquisite feature debut focuses on a teenager in an arranged marriage, who learns quickly about her world’s suffocating patriarchy.

Mayfair’s dreamlike feminist tale of repressed desire is filled with passion, beauty and melancholy. May (Nguyễn Phương Trà My) is a teenager who, through an arranged marriage, becomes the third wife of prosperous rural landowner Hung. She quickly comes of age, learning what she can about sex, and also about the strict patriarchal hierarchy of her society: a world in which women are scarcely more than property and fulfilment of any kind is fleeting. May soon pins all her hopes on becoming the first of Hung’s wives to bear him a son. Writer/director Mayfair based the tale in part on her own family history, recruiting a splendid cast including the great Trần Nữ Yên Khê (The Scent of Green Papaya). The Third Wife’s ravishing cinematography brings the pastoral setting to life with a mix of lyricism and bracing immediacy.

Travelling Film Festival Newcastle, June 21 - 23: Tickets also available for The Third Wife at TFF Newcastle.

With 'The Third Wife', new talent Mayfair reclaims... silvery strands from the neglect of history and weaves them into a film so sensuous we can lose ourselves in it, but so vividly real we might also be able to find ourselves there.

Jessica Kiang, Variety