Laments of warriors’ wives Re-gendering the war in Vietnamese cinema

This article considers the representation of war in Vietnamese cinema by engaging in a gendered exploration of the legacy of war. By taking gender as an analytical category and cinema as a form of representation, the article examines the largely unexplored issue of the impact of war on female identity in Vietnam. Through the discussion of two recent Vietnamese films, – Dò•i cát (Sandy Lives) and (Wharf of Widows), the article draws attention to the contradiction between wartime empowerment and post-war disempowerment of women in Vietnam. It argues that, while representation of the de-feminized woman/ soldier received much imaginative attention because it fitted well with state-sanctioned interpretations of the war as a collective patriotic sacrifice, the representation of the impact on female identity, on the other hand, was given little consideration since it conflicted with traditional gender configurations in Vietnamese