The Last Wife — Victor Vu

The latest Vietnamese box office sensation from Victor Vu, one of the country’s most prolific directors, The Last Wife teases the gaping hole for genre-defying historical romances in the international box office appetite. Set in the feudal 19th century Nguyen dynasty in Northern Vietnam, Vu adapts The Lake of Vengeance by author Hồng Thái and allows the film’s star, Kaity Nguyễn — here playing Linh, the third (and most recent) wife to an old and infertile provincial governor — to passionately propel the film across a variety of genres, including the sweeping historical romance, drama, comedy, and even mystery-thriller.

But there’s no doubt that the film’s romance is its center. Linh loves another man, the more age-compatible and handsome Nhân (Thuận Nguyễn). Because her husband communicates exclusively through abuse and manipulation, her love affair never comes across as disloyal or a sign of poor character. The affair does, however, still carry the consequences of female infidelity in a patriarchal feudal system. She not only learns to navigate her abusive husband, if that’s even possible, but also has no option except to put up with his other two wives. First Wife (Kim Oanh) is particularly conniving as she frequently puts down and even attacks Linh for her humble roots in a local crabbing village. The stern Second Wife (Dinh Ngọc Diep) treats Linh as a human, even if it’s difficult to tell for most of the runtime whether or not she does so only to undermine the power of First Wife or not. In one early scene, First Wife asks over a meal and in front of Linh’s seven-year-old daughter and their shared husband, “Third Wife, last night did you receive a plentiful load?” Second Wife adds, “[Plentiful] doesn’t matter. What matters is if it was thick or watery.” The inappropriate comments set up the way the entire house thinks of Linh: as a vessel for men, decorated with pretty flesh.

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