Complicating Gender Through Vietnamese Short Films
By: Dan Tran
Last year, the festival witnessed the unpacking and subversion of gender
norms in Ash Mayfair’s debut feature, The Third Wife. This wasn’t the first
time a Vietnamese director has delved into the topic. Trần Anh Hùng, perhaps
among the first few Vietnamese to be recognized by the film industry, also
weaves the theme of gender roles into The Scent of Green Papaya (1993).
Indeed, gender has been a perennial topic of interest for Vietnamese
directors. It is therefore unsurprising that the various dimensions of
gender can be gleaned from Vietnamese films featuring in the 2019 Southeast
Asian Short Film Competition.
That men and women are traditionally defined in accordance to several binary
oppositions informs their depiction on the silver screen. For one, women are
depicted to inhabit the space of the home, while men seemingly reside
outside it. Evidently, women of Sweet, Salty (dir. Dương Diệu Linh) populate
the home. The only brief instance that the viewer sees men in it is when the
son-in-law of the protagonist (Hà) comes to pick up his child. Phạm Thiên
Ân’s Stay Awake, Be Ready rehashes this gender norm, seen in the patrons to
the street stall being exclusively men. If this is not convincing enough, a
clearer portrayal of how the two genders inhabit differing spaces can be
found in Phan Đăng Di’s Bi, Don’t Be Afraid. The luxury of time of a feature
film enables it to juxtapose this dichotomy, highlighting the absence of the
father in the home.
Space configures social roles. Women are thus relegated to affairs at home.
In Sweet, Salty, Hà overlooks all pragmatic aspects of the family, ranging
from cooking to monitoring her daughter’s menstruation. Outside the home,
women are still found looking after the family. This is evident in Stay
Awake, Be Ready, where the victim of the traffic accident being a mother
riding her child home. In contrast, the men of the film engage in abstract
conversations about the human condition, issues that seemingly render
familial concerns a matter of triviality.

Men are thus valued in relation to their intellect. The dynamics between the
three men by the street stall in Stay Awake, Be Ready attests to this. The
man who talks about metaphysics is arguably the most respected in the group,
as his opinions are readily agreed upon by the other two. Meanwhile, the guy
who chases after the boy who stole his banknote is chided for acting on
impulse.
Conversely, women are judged by their appearance. The beer promoter in Stay
Awake, Be Ready is strategically a young, pale-complexioned, long-haired
female in suggestive clothes. This is to cater to the view of the male
patrons with traditional Vietnamese standards of beauty. Women’s emphasis on
vanity is also evident in Sweet, Salty. Ha prepares for the confrontation
with her husband’s mistress not only by dressing up and wearing jewellery
but also by visiting the beauty salon on the day before. Her motivation lies
in wanting to look prettier than the mistress, in hopes of exerting her
superiority.
Again, the time constraint disallows representing the entirety of the
dichotomization of men and women along the intellect/appearance axis within
a single short. The Scent of Green Papaya, unbounded by said delimitation,
does exactly that. Women of the bourgeois families are almost always seen
elaborately dressing up in áo dài, differentiating themselves from the
servants in simple áo bà ba. Meanwhile, the elder brother of the family to
which Mùi initially works for and his pianist friend engage in an
intellectual pursuit of music writing and performance.
Ultimately, women see themselves through the eyes of men. This is the
premise of Sweet, Salty, where the protagonist’s overall intent is to seek
validation from her husband. By plotting the confrontation between herself,
her husband, and his mistress, she hopes that the husband would come to
realize her superiority over the mistress, who will give birth to a baby
girl rather than Ha’s baby boy. The validation also comes from other females
inhabiting the society permeated by patriarchal values. Hà’s mother and the
salon staff regard Hà with more worth, knowing that she is bearing a son.
But the Vietnamese short films also disrupt these traditional and clinical
representation of men and women. The ugly sides of men are exposed in Sweet,
Salty: the infidelity of Ha’s husband, the irresponsibility of her
son-in-law coming to pick up his child late, and inattention of the male
construction worker to the correct phrasing of the Vietnamese proverb on the
prediction of the sex of a child. Viewer can also find in Vo Anh Vu’s
Gallery the foulness of men – the perverted gaze of a man at a damp dress,
visualizing the owner in a state of undress; and the irresponsible drinking
that led to a male character’s vomiting.

Women, on the other hand, are presented with an attitude of incredulity and
defiance towards social mores. The Graduation of Edison, directed by Phạm
Hoàng Minh Thy, witnesses the sister’s resistance against the norm of
chopping the tree from her head at her graduation. Unlike Hà of Sweet,
Salty, she represents women as not merely acquiescent entities that
unquestioningly obey duties and traditions. Instead, she exemplifies an
autonomous female agent capable of thinking for herself. Of course,
eventually she still cuts off the tree, but only after deliberation between
her conflicting values of agency, tradition, and familial love.
Coming to terms with tradition in view of modern feminism is therefore a
cornerstone of the identity of contemporary Vietnamese women. Many attempts
at representing this double consciousness are present in the local film
landscape, the most successful of which being films starred and produced by
Ngô Thanh Vân. Her women-centric films are narrated by a female voice
struggling to find autonomy in a society still pervaded by patriarchy. This
can be seen in Furie – the first Vietnamese film available on Netflix. A
patriarchal society that looks down on single mothers and women taking up
violent jobs commonly associated with men sets the backdrop for the
protagonist’s journey of rescuing her abducted daughter.
As much as women fight to be free of their traditional gender roles, men
also seek to complicate their gender construction and the norm of
masculinity. Gallery dismisses the representation of men as rational beings.
By making the toilet and his own body a canvas for artistic expression, the
artist in Gallery rejects the use of a toilet as a utilitarian space for
washing.
Furthermore, the sentimental side of men is unveiled. A man is seen to
caress a polka-dotted tie belonging another man, conjuring up sensuous
imageries about the owner of the garment. This homoerotic undercurrent can
also be read as a critique of the stifling force of heteronormativity. The
story of Big Father, Small Father and Other Stories by Phan Đăng Di also
runs along these lines, but with homoeroticism lying at the heart of the
film.
Vũ, the protagonist, is torn between his attraction to his male flatmate and
societal expectation of him to date and marry a woman.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Vietnamese short films, when seen
together, offer a layered depiction of gender. The entrenched Confucian
values perpetuate patriarchal mindsets, while the country’s postcolonial and
globalized identity raises issues about gender norms and heteronormativity.
These divided ideologies necessarily inform the intent and behaviours of
contemporary Vietnamese, who would need to then seek reconciliation between
tradition and the prevailing modern worldviews.
– Dan Tran