In 19th century rural Vietnam, fourteen-year-old May is ready to become the third wife of a wealthy landowner. Little does she know that her hidden desires will take her by surprise and force her to make a choice between living in safety and being free.... (Full plot summary below)
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In 19th century rural Vietnam, fourteen-year-old May is ready to become the third wife of a wealthy landowner. Little does she know that her hidden desires will take her by surprise and force her to make a choice between living in safety and being free.
Leave your thoughts about The Third Wife.
| VarietyJessica KiangThis 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. |
| Screen DailyJohn BerraIf this focus on fleeting pleasures occasionally risks exoticizing the subject, Mayfair’s sensory approach to illustrating an almost unbearable absence of female fulfillment achieves a powerful universal resonance. |
| Washington PostHau ChuSome viewers may want delicacy in a period film about women navigating a world in which they’ve been pitted against one another. But maybe, Mayfair suggests, we need the blunt reminder: The issues that women were confronting in the Vietnam of the 1800s — a world in which they’re considered property more than people — aren’t all that different from today. |
| Movie NationRoger MooreThe Third Wife lacks the Technicolor saturated hues of the great Zhang Yimou Chinese period pieces it imitates — “Ju Dou,” Red Sorghum” and “To Live” among them. It lacks the emotional, dramatic punch of those stories as well. |
| Film ThreatAlan NgMayfair’s The Third Wife is a powerful reminder that the oppression of women is not strictly a Western problem and everyone—women or men—want to be free to choose their own path in life. |
| The Film StageJared MobarakIt’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. |
| The A.V. ClubBeatrice LoayzaAn unabashedly reticent arthouse film, The Third Wife takes its time drifting through May’s coming of age, which will try the patience of some audiences. But those open to the seduction of Mayfair’s understated drama and its beautiful natural imagery will be handsomely rewarded. |
| The PlaylistAndrew BundyAsh Mayfair’s debut film is an astonishing achievement for a first feature, one not every film-goer will be able to stomach, but a work every caring cinephile should see. |
| San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonWhat we have here is a small, delicate mini-masterpiece, and bright new talent behind the camera. |
| Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleThere is much that is finely wrought here as a tactile slice of women’s history told in careful observances, hidden textures and the sights and sounds of nature unbound. |
