Victor Vu's breakthrough with 'The Last Wife'

The film had its premiere for the press and invited guests on the evening of October 31, and had many early screenings for the audience on the evenings of November 1-2, then officially opened in theaters nationwide on November 3.

Breakthrough in depicting regional context

Most of those who watched The Last Wife highly appreciated the film's efforts to recreate the image of the feudal North, from the beautifully moving setting to the meticulous traditional costumes, as well as the impressive acting of the cast such as Thuan Nguyen, Meritorious Artist Kim Oanh, Meritorious Artist Quang Thang, Dinh Ngoc Diep, Quoc Huy, Anh Dung, little Luu Ly...; especially the extremely shining main role of "aunt Ba - Linh" played by Kaity Nguyen.

Bước đột phá của Victor Vũ với Người vợ cuối cùng - Ảnh 1. — Kaity Nguyen convinces the audience with her increasingly improved and shining acting in *The Last Wife*

Director Victor Vu said he consulted many sources of documents, invested carefully in costumes and settings to bring poetic yet majestic images of the Northern Vietnam landscape, through the meticulous work of recreating images of the feudal North: communal houses, mandarin offices, feasts, rural markets... with more than 80 days of continuous work and more than 25 design team members. He hopes that the film will contribute to promoting and helping audiences love the beauty of traditional Vietnamese culture.

Director Phan Gia Nhat Linh excitedly shared after watching the film: "Victor Vu and his colleagues have brought a satisfying film, full of emotions, you can see the delicate care in every detail of the film. I am happy that the Vietnamese film market has another work that is invested meticulously and magnificently." Critic Chau Quang Phuoc commented: " The Last Wife is a breakthrough of Victor Vu in choosing a topic related to the regional context. This is also one of the rare Vietnamese films of southern cinema that chooses such a distinct style with the context of a rural area of the North in the past. I only mention the landscape/setting of the film The Last Wife based on a quick comparison with Vietnamese films of similar dimensions, such as the land and people of the ancient Southern region in the film version of Southern Forest Land by director Nguyen Quang Dung, or previously the land of Hue in Moon at the Bottom of the Well by director Nguyen Vinh Son... The reason why I have to mention the space/setting of the film story of The Last Wife is because for those who love beauty (related to regional culture), the immense landscape of mountains, forests and lakes of the Bac Kan region, and the beauty of ancient Vietnamese costumes of the past..., will definitely make them step into the theater to watch the movie".

The Last Wife is a film inspired by the novel Ho Oan Han by writer Hong Thai, using the feudal context to draw a story about love and pain of women, but it can be seen that the film crew has made efforts to restore and bring images as close to reality as possible, compared to old documentary images. On forums about Vietnamese traditional costumes, there have been reviews praising the film's costumes.

Go to the end of the "hot scene"

The forbidden love story of Linh (Kaity Nguyen) and Nhan (Thuan Nguyen) that transcends feudal etiquette leads to a series of tragedies, along with the message of love and the desire for freedom in The Last Wife that truly takes the audience through many emotions: from surprise, excitement, suspicion to sympathy and happiness.

Bước đột phá của Victor Vũ với Người vợ cuối cùng - Ảnh 2. — The film has emotional scenes full of hidden meanings between the two characters Linh and Nhan.

The film depicts Linh's conflicted thoughts in the middle of a lonely mansion. Originally a young girl with a future ahead of her, Linh had to leave everything she loved to marry into a mandarin's palace, enduring the fate of a concubine who was rejected and looked down upon. This is the first film in which Victor Vu did not use a series of plot twists as before, but focused on his emotional storytelling with a story purely about psychology and love, with the desire to touch the hearts of viewers about the so-called "unforgettable love" in each person's life; or prove the familiar saying "love is only beautiful when it is unfinished" to understand something more terrible than a breakup, which is still keeping the other person in your heart even though the two are no longer together.

The Last Wife is also the first film in which director Victor Vu goes all the way to the end of "hot scenes" with violent love scenes on screen. The director shared that the film "was not cut during censorship" and was labeled T18 (forbidden to audiences under 18 years old). He added: "It can be said that this is the first time Victor feels that these scenes are really necessary in his film. All the love scenes in the film are to build the deep feelings of the characters Linh and Nhan, when they live in a society where love is not considered the top priority, people almost have to bury, suppress all emotions and desires for happiness behind moral prejudices". It can be seen that the hot scenes in the film are filmed extremely artistically, with meaning and significance when showing two different actions of two men on Linh's body: one side only sees the third wife as a "childbearing machine", while the other side is full of love, dedication, cherishing, respecting and loving.

Besides many plus points as analyzed above (and the excellent background music that contributes to touching the viewers' emotions), the film is not "smooth" in some places, such as: the script resolves the knots, important situations are still easy; the dialogue is a bit silly in some places and does not have the old quality as the film's color; the long duration of 2 hours and 12 minutes makes the film sometimes spread out, the pace is not fast... Besides, the long scene of secret agent Kien investigating the murder case is full of detective colors, solving modern crimes, making the film "uneven" in terms of rhythm and genre. However, it should also be noted: with Victor Vu's emotional and fresh storytelling, The Last Wife is still a film worth watching and has good quality in the general level of Vietnamese cinema today.