Mayfair’s first film is one well-constructed and daring examination of such injustices, and it’s absolutely worth checking out.

| Original Score: A | Jul 17, 2024

When it comes to cinemas growing need for more female voices, seeing someone like Mayfair create such a powerful debut is exactly what the medium needs right now.

| Feb 13, 2022

Ash Mayfair's The Third Wife is a powerful exercise in empathy, an exquisitely beautiful film on the surface which contains one of the bleakest portrayals of how patriarchy limits women's autonomy.

| Jun 8, 2021

A pleasure for the senses that, unsurprisingly, delights. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 3, 2020

The Third Wife should have a lot more to say and show, but it wastes its cultural specificity and philosophical core to tell a disappointingly universal tale.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2020

While its slow pace may prove difficult for some there's no denying the emotion on display. This tale is one based in truth, and the window through which we are given license to witness it is one of beauty, restraint, and a fascinating lack of judgment.

| Mar 17, 2020

The Third Wife spends its time considering the hidden depths of these women not only as defined by their individual wants but also by what society dictates upon them.

| Feb 25, 2020

The Third Wife can be effective if you have never seen a movie about arranged marriages and women treated as trade goods before. Otherwise, it has little to add to the conversation.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 10, 2020

Far from succumbing to the melodrama trap, director Ash Mayfair adopts a position that respects her protagonist's concerns. [Full review in spanish]

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 29, 2020

An art-house treat with sparse dialogue and aesthetics covering up the emotions.

| Original Score: B | Jan 25, 2020

This is a gorgeously shot, yet unflinching (although not prurient) look at a young woman attempting to survive and thrive in difficult and repressive conditions.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 22, 2020

Mayfield didn't thrill me with her methods of bringing out emotion and intimacy, but revealed a huge capacity to embrace aesthetic filmmaking.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 14, 2019

Nguyen is entrancing in the title role, carrying the full weight of the production on her slight shoulders, as she evolves from naive waif to erudite young mother before our eyes.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 14, 2019

A film with minimal dialogues, The Third Wife is a visual story. Its sensual aesthetics and dream-like sequences wrap a harsh reality: the plight of women in a patriarchal society.

| Jul 29, 2019

Writer-director Ash Mayfair makes a hauntingly beautiful feature film debut with The Third Wife, a quietly devastating period drama based on her own family history.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 26, 2019

The story is hardly more than a series of brushstrokes that slowly create a nuanced picture of life in Hung's household.

| Jul 23, 2019

Perhaps most remarkable is the contrast between the intense interior drama and the lush, languorous world in which it rages.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 19, 2019

[Director Ash] Mayfair has created a lush portrait of a time that wasn't without its pleasures, but in which women also led severely proscribed lives.

| Jul 12, 2019

It's certainly a curiosity for connoisseurs of Third World cinema.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 8, 2019

[Ash] Mayfair crafts a composition that feels masterful beyond her slim CV in emotional complexity, plot and orchestration.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 8, 2019