The characters of Tieu Vy, Ky Duyen, Kaity Nguyen, Thien An... are beautiful but hastily built, the psychological developments are not subtle but a bit exaggerated.
Female characters and women's issues have always been a major theme in Vietnamese movies. There are a series of female main characters with beautiful appearances, carefully crafted, but sketchy, characters that are difficult to leave in the audience's mind.
Are Vietnamese female films more important than male films?
Director - producer Thu Trang explained to Tuoi Tre: "Because there are a lot of female audiences. Male audiences rarely go to the movies, they only go when their girlfriends invite them. So most of my female characters are more important than male characters."
Thien An's character Thuy Van in Billionaire Kiss Thu Trang is proactive, independent, and has career dreams. She is a "heartbreakingly understanding" child, always trying to take care of her older sister because of her mother's last wish.
But when she was in huge debt and threatened by gangsters, Thuy Van followed her sister's advice and dated a rich young man to get money.
This choice, although explained in the context of the film, still left many viewers feeling unsatisfied.
In The Four Guardians, The characters of Tieu Vy and Ky Duyen are two opposite types of women.
Quynh Anh (Tieu Vy) puts love above all, takes care of her boyfriend's every meal and sleep, has no job or personality of her own. Quynh Anh is immature in life, and was told bluntly by Karen (Ky Duyen): "You are very stupid."
Karen is a successful, leading, powerful woman who proactively approaches and plans to trap the guy she likes. As a "homewrecker", Karen responds confidently and manipulatively, and is also described as a "pervert".
But while Quynh Anh has many actions and thoughts that are difficult to sympathize with, Karen "breaks" in the second half of the film, behaving inappropriately and inconsistently with her original personality.
Still Love the wrong best friend Kaity Nguyen's book does not add details about living conditions, growing up conditions, psychological development related to Vietnamese society... so the character does not necessarily have a real inner self.
Lack of sophistication
According to lecturer Hoang Da Vu - Hanoi University of Theatre and Cinema, we should not demand that women in films represent the whole. Vietnamese women but need to build more carefully and in depth.
Regarding Tieu Vy's character Quynh Anh, she analyzed: "When watching the movie, everyone understands that the director intentionally built the female character's personality as a weak, docile, and dependent girl...
In the last third of the film, after the breakdown, she wants to change and stand up for herself to create her own life and dreams.
Does she represent all Vietnamese women?
We should forget about criticizing the "image of Vietnamese women". Nowadays, each female character is an independent subject, which brings diversity and multi-dimensionality.
About Thuy Van of Thien An in The Billionaire Kiss , Hoang Da Vu said: "At first she was very independent, didn't want to rely on men, but just because she listened to her sister, she easily played the role of seducing two young masters, and all the motives were from difficult circumstances on the outside but she herself did not feel any torment.
It's also the director's imposition when building and expressing characters that change too easily, like the ending, there's no love motivation between the characters."
Through recent Vietnamese films, Hoang Da Vu commented that the weakness of Vietnamese films is that they "cannot show the character's psychological development in a subtle and hidden way, but often follow events. Everything is exaggerated and made noisy to cover up the weakness of the inner self".
For example, Tomorrow is Tran Thanh's best film in expressing the character's inner thoughts because it shows many hidden and torn inner conflicts, although there are still many noisy places.
Regarding the reason why there is still a lack of strong, proactive women in Vietnamese films, Hoang Da Vu said this character model has not been widely accepted by viewers because there are still gender stereotypes.
At the same time, the way movie characters are built often shows the process of change from weak to strong through events, but if they are independent from the beginning, it is difficult to have a story to tell.
Strong female character archetypes also appear in My husband is my wife, My girlfriend is the boss, My sister is my sister ... However, if it is too one-sided and excessive, it will easily fall into a rut.
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