The Third Wife

Synopsis:  A year in the life of May (Nguyen Phuong Tra My) who at the age of 14 becomes the third wife of a well-to-do silk merchant in mid-19th century Vietnam.

Writer-director Ash Mayfair’s debut feature is broadly describable as a coming-of-age story, one made very appealing thanks to its nostalgically exotic setting, finely-wrought story-telling, and alluring aesthetic form.

The film opens with May’s marriage and follows her initiation into the rigidly paternalistic social system of whose upper echelons she has become a part. The Third Wife is however no history of subjugation and exploitation but is rather a quietly reflective  portrait of bygone times. Taking May’s point-of view we follow her journey from deflowering to pregnancy, experiences which are mediated by her supportive fellow wives  Lao (Nguyen Nhu Quynh Le) and Xuan (Mai Thu Huong) as together the three women, more or less dutifully, fulfill  their allotted roles in the social and physical order of things

Vietnamese-born Mayfair is particularly interested in the female experience of these twin concerns, her film almost exclusively focused on the women and in particular the wide-eyed, compliant May as she silently contemplates the world around her. This, she learns, is far from simple as she discovers an affair between Xuan and their husband’s oldest son, a transgression which awakens her own sexuality in unpredictable ways

Mayfair and cinematographer Chananun Chotrungroj take a rather romanticized view of all this, setting the story in some verdant rural idyll from yesteryear and allowing May's story to unfold at an unhurried pace. The result is a film that is picture-book pleasing with a significant and well-handled accent on the erotic. With limited dialogue, and what there is being steadfastly mundane, the result is charming if dramatically light.

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