An expat is someone who lives outside of their homeland, but in this Amazon Prime series, they are too someone who lives outside that personal state that is peace. The feeling of being foreign when misfortune overtakes us.
Expats (expatriates, based on the 2016 novel by Janice YK Lee) offers us the intimate diary of several duels that took place in Hong Kong. The camera manages to reflect the fascinating (and sometimes suffocating) atmosphere of that city-state with more tourists than inhabitants. That hypnotic island with luxury hotels, impossible skyscrapers and a desperate night market welcomes Margaret (Nicole Kidman) to explode the drama..
In two timelines, before and after the bad luck, we see that the Western protagonist is uncomfortable, trying to adapt to the Eastern one. She left New York with her three children to accompany her husband Clarke (Brian Tee), who was transferred from her company. We would think they have it all, from familial love to enormous luxury, but They are currently missing something crucial: one of their children.
In the first minutes there is a party, a fiftieth birthday with which the couple tries to face the social gaze despite the strange disappearance. “We’re just trying to create a sense of normalcy,” she explains. We won’t reveal what happened, but the absent child, the youngest, is the trigger to dive into the irreparable AND In those other victims, those who created evil without wanting it and somehow became dead in life.
Adding to Margaret’s sadness is that of two other women linked to her life, Hilary (Sarayu Rao), who survives a disintegrating marriage, and Mercy (Ji-young Yoo), a university student who has never managed to be the woman he wants. herself again after the fateful night involving Margaret. A dark narrative and an eye that accompanies that darkness that its characters go through.
“The stories focus on the victim, those responsible for the tragedy are never mentioned”, introduces us to a voice-over which presents cases such as that of a child who injures his brother’s vertebra, leaving him paralysed. “There’s not a single moment I don’t think of you after destroying your life,” reinforces that voice to tell us we’ll see the perspective of someone who suffers eternally from guilt.
About two families and their employees in bed, the drama directed by Chinese Lulu Wang also takes us through secondary characters who in turn change the lives of the main ones. Anguish makes no distinction between nationality or social class.
Kidman as a distraught and bewildered mother.Compassion, forgiveness, survivor’s remorse, uprooting, privileged strata, inability to give a name to the loss of a child, the fatal distractions that full attention to the cell phone causes today… We walk through all these topics expatriatesproject it sparked the ire of many when filming began in 2021. With the protocol measures due to the pandemic in full operation, Kidman (executive producer) In those days he obtained exemption from mandatory quarantine during his business trip to Hong Kong.
A story that was not liked by a certain political sector, because it also recounts the protests in Hong Kong in 2014 (“The revolution or the umbrella movement”, which called for the withdrawal of the electoral reform of Congress). stands out for its great performance.
Despite the slow narrative, Expats It’s worth it because it’s not just a map of the fallen, but of who lets himself be dragged down by that fall, who punishes himself for life by trying to respond to what made him be there at the least suitable moment. accidentally trigger fear.
Kidman, a disappearance and a lurking sense of guilt.File
Qualification: Well.
Type: Drama. Address: Lulu Wang. Launch: Nicole Kidman, Brian Tee, Sarayu Blue, Ji-young Yoo. Broadcast: Amazon Prime.
Source: Clarin
