The Third Wife

Description

Product Description

In 19th century rural Vietnam, 14-year-old May becomes the third wife of wealthy landowner Hung. Soon she learns that she can only gain status by asserting herself as a woman who can give birth to a male child. May’s hope to change her status turns into a real and tantalizing possibility when she gets pregnant. Faced with forbidden love and its devastating consequences, May finally comes to an understanding of the brutal truth: the options available to her are few and far between.

Bonus features include Director’s Commentary, short film Grasshopper, directed by Ash Mayfair, and NYAFF Chat interview with director Ash Mayfair.

Review

WINNER- NETPAC Award – Toronto Int’l. Film Festival
WINNER- TVE – Another Look Award – San Sebastian Film Festival
WINNER- Gold Hugo, New Director’s Competition – Chicago Int’l. Film Festival
WINNER- Best Film – Kolkata Int’l. Film Festival
WINNER – Special Jury Award – Minsk Int’l. Film Festival
NOMINATED – Emerging Filmmaker Award – Hawaii Int’l. Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION – Busan Int’l. Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION – Vancouver Int’l. Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION – Denver Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION – Virginia Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION – San Diego Asian Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION – Palm Springs Int’l. Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION – Santa Barbara Int’l. Film Festival
OFFICIAL SELECTION – Outfest Fusion —

[A] finespun debut feature…The sensuality that Mayfair and Chananun Chotrungroj, the director of photography, create around May is seductive, and also unnerving. – A.O. Scott, The New York Times

…aesthetically entrancing…sensitively poetic… – Neil Young, The Hollywood Reporter

Ash Mayfair’s supremely atmospheric feature debut explores repressed desires against the resplendent but emotionally suffocating landscape of late-19th century rural Vietnam. Telling the story of a young girl who enters an arranged marriage to a landowner, The Third Wife echoes the ravishing art-house triumphs of Tran Anh Hung, who serves here as an artistic advisor , while his wife and frequent collaborator Tran Nu Yen Khe plays one of the principal roles. Yet Mayfair acquits herself in such confident fashion that her sensuously elegant drama isn’t at all hindered by the inevitable comparisons. – John Berra, Screen Daily

Debut director Ash Mayfair delivers a gorgeously intimate, evocative, and melancholy story of female subjugation in 19th-century Vietnam. [B]y focusing with unwavering empathy on the interior life of teenage bride May (Nguyen Phuong Tra My), the remarkable The Third Wife feels newborn and ineffably modern. Winner of prizes at both the San Sebastian and Toronto festivals, this is the rare debut that derives its freshness not from inexperience but from a balance between compassion and restraint that most filmmakers take decades to achieve. –Jessica Kiang, Variety

The visuals are key to Mayfair’s success, with dialogue often kept to the minimum in favour of looks – alone or shared – that offer a window into the wives’ psyches. The use of colour by Mayfair and her cinematographer Chananun Chotrungroj (Hotel Mist, Pop Aye) – mainly pastels with pops of red and yellow – also recalls the mastery displayed by Zhang Yimou in his early consideration of multiple marriages, Raise The Red Lantern. Mayfair treats her scenes of sex and desire with restraint, using juxtaposition to evoke mood… – Amber Wilkinson, Eye for Film

The Third Wife holds our unbroken concentration for its duration, its elegiac reverence capturing our attention with its contextually heavy pans and gorgeous frames deftly telling us where to look through sheer compositional perfection. We’re watching a world crumbling under the weight of its expectations as the prisoners within discover what matters most at the cost of innocence. It’s a mesmerizing look behind a curtain torn away so Mayfair can reveal an authenticity too often masked by historical precedent and conservative acquiescence. Love is created in rebellion, but ultimately stifled by the need for survival. – Jared Mobarak, The Film Stage

This is Ash Mayfair’s first feature film and a personal story loosely based on the life of her great-grandmother. She expertly explores the subservience of women in Vietnamese and Asian cultures. Visually, The Third Wife comes off as a wonderful painting. Director of Photography Chananun Chotrungroj beautifully captures rural Vietnam, and the sets are authentic amazing. – Alan Ng, Film Threat

Writer-director Ash Mayfair’s debut feature – about a 14-year-old girl, May (Nguyen Phuong Tra My), who is married off to much older rich man in 19th-century Vietnam – is a work of quiet empathy that skillfully depicts the harsh limits of the title character’s existence without ever reveling in her despair. –Mallory Andrews, Cinema Scope