The Last Wife is the movie with the hottest scenes in Victor Vu’s career to date. Furthermore, the main actress is Kaity Nguyen – one of the most beautiful and talented muses on Vietnamese screen. Therefore, they become the focus of attention of the work. However, the way the filmmaker born in 1975 performed the sex scene lacked sophistication and not enough emotion.
Is the hot scene in The Last Wife really necessary?
The Last Wife revolves around Linh (Kaity Nguyen) – a poor girl who has to become a concubine for district governor Duc Trong (merited artist Quang Thang) to save her father. The girl is responsible for giving birth to a male heir. But for 7 years, Linh only gave birth to a daughter. That’s why she lives like a servant in the house.
Everything changed when Linh met her ex-lover Nhan (Thuan Nguyen) while going to the market. The nostalgia for her unfinished love and the pain of being treated cruelly at the mandarin’s house made her quickly fall into Nhan’s arms. Then, as their relationship deepened, the two came to a bold decision.
Victor Vu once shared in an interview: “It can be said that this is the first time I feel these scenes are really necessary in my movie. All the love scenes in the movie are to build the character’s deep emotions. Linh and Nhan, when they live in a society where the issue of love is not taken seriously. People almost have to bury and suppress all emotions and desires for happiness behind moral prejudices.”
True to what the director said, the scene is hot The Last Wife is truly necessary. It not only shows Linh’s suppressed desires for love but also plays an important role in developing the character’s psychology. The emotional difference shown in the love scene between Linh and Nhan and Duc Trong is part of the reason for her next actions.
Too sensitive, lacking art
Hot scene inside The Last Wife is necessary, but the way Victor Vu built it was monotonous and not emotional enough. Although they were ex-lovers, Linh and Nhan have been separated for 7 years. Furthermore, Linh is now the concubine of the district governor. However, just after meeting Nhan in the morning at the market, that evening she immediately ran to her lover’s house.
After a few reprimands, the two quickly reconciled and rushed at each other like two moths. Everything happened so quickly and easily. The film should have shown more of Linh’s suffering and pent-up desire for love. She even had to fight fiercely internally when Tam Tong and Tu Duc still weighed heavily on the shoulders of women during that period.
Linh and Nhan’s love scenes were also very monotonous. Instead of bringing an artistic sense, director Victor Vu chose to follow the path of B-grade movies that specialize in using hot scenes to attract audiences. The character’s physical movements are performed quite sensitively and are repeated many times.
Besides, showing the hot scene too early also makes the character’s psychology more awkward. Because the relationship between Linh and Nhan is secret. In reality, both of them will not dare to “open up” like what the movie shows because if everything is revealed, not only them but also their whole family will face death. So that The Last Wife stuck in the middle, with plenty of sensitivity but lacking artistry and hidden meaning.
The image of the noose was sadly omitted
Cuc Dau (1990) Launched 33 years ago, the content is quite similar to The Last Wife. The film also revolves around a young girl whose family is poor and has an unsatisfactory marriage. Cúc Dau (Gong Li) was sold as a wife to fabric dyeing shop owner Duong Kim San (Ly Vy). She was often abused by her husband because she could not give birth to an heir. Prolonged resentment causes Cuc Dau to have an extramarital relationship with Duong Thien Thanh (Ly Bao Dien) – an adopted nephew who works in Duong Kim San’s dyeing shop. It’s also about adultery due to suppressed love desires, but Truong Yimou chose an artistic approach to the hot scene.
From the beginning, the lovemaking between Cuc Dau and Duong Kim San was only expressed by curses, screams, and begging coming from the boss’s room that Duong Thien Thanh heard. No need to show it clearly with hot scenes, viewers can still understand how Cuc Dau is abused by her husband and how she herself suffers every night. After that, the love scene between Cuc Dau and Duong Thien Thanh is full of metaphor and association. Truong Yimou skillfully alternately showed Gong Li’s satisfied face and the image of a continuously rotating dyeing wheel. The long cloth continuously fell, causing water to splash. The movie doesn’t need any explicit scenes, but the audience can still imagine what’s going on.
Above all, the scene also clearly shows the tragic fate of the characters associated with the fabric dyeing shop. This is not only the main context of the work but also the constraint and bondage that poor girls in that period could not escape. Cuc Dau and Thien Thanh’s relationship will always have to be hidden behind the four walls of the dyeing shop. It was Truong Yimou’s creative and impressive approach that made the scene deeply imprinted in the viewers’ minds. There’s no need for the actors to show off too much skin, they’re still very sexy and full of emotion.
To be fair, the scene is hot The Last Wife There are also some commendable points. Victor Vu clearly shows the difference in the way of lovemaking between Linh and district governor Duc Trong and Nhan. If Duc Trong only knew how to “get over it” without caring about Linh’s feelings, then Nhan cared and pampered her, allowing her to voluntarily express her feelings. But these are just the basic details that any work must have.
Compared to the fabric dyeing wheel of Cuc Dau, The Last Wife There is also a very potential metaphor: the noose that Duc Trong district officer used to tie Linh’s leg so that she could conceive soon. However, Victor Vu did not explore this detail further. Perhaps, through the image of a rope, The Last Wife can reveal the suffocation in Linh’s life at the mandarin’s house, the physical and mental pain she had to endure. When she met Nhan again, she couldn’t live her life to the fullest and was always afraid of her secret love affair being discovered. From here, the two deciding to run away will be more logical and emotional.
Besides, the hot scenes only focus on a short period of time at the beginning of the movie with such high frequency that it makes viewers feel suffocated. The complete absence of sex scenes in the latter part of the work gives the feeling that they were only added to attract audiences to the theater instead of actually playing an important role as Victor Vu said.
Hot scene inside The Last Wife It could have enhanced the work and made viewers remember it after leaving the theater if Victor Vu had done it in an artistic direction. However, they became blurred and eventually slipped from the viewer’s mind just like the movie’s unclimax script.