Expats start with a wave of tragedies. A medic falls asleep at the wheel, killing 3 pedestrians. The pilots of a small plane get too close to a lift, the wing of their plane severing the cable and causing the skiers to fall to the ground. Deaths. An amicable quarrel between two dual siblings results in the paralysis of one of them for life. All accidents, all disrupt the lives of those who suffer from them and their perpetrators.
Mercy (Ji-young Yoo), a young woman who positions herself as the culprit of an unknown tragedy and carries the weight of it every day, tells these stories in an impartial tone. “People like me,” she wonders, “Are they forgiven?
This question is one of the many creators of Expats, Lulu Wang (The Farewell) seeks to get to the bottom of this six-episode miniseries. Also joining the fray are ideas about motherhood, marriage, and belonging, all of which attach a Hong Kong-based expat network as Mercy. Wang spins this network deftly for the most part, even as the final episodes begin to falter.
In addition to its initial stories about doctors, pilots, and twins, Expats, adapted from Janice Y. K. Lee’s 2016 novel The Expatriates, focuses on its own tragedy: a tragedy that changes the lives of three American women living in Hong Kong. .
Our first point of access to their lives is former architect Margaret (Nicole Kidman). Her biggest frustration is the prestige of being a housewife that came with her husband Clarke (Brian Tee) moving to Hong Kong to work. However, this has been overshadowed by the disappearance. of his youngest son, Gus (Connor James). His pain is omnipresent, clouding his movements and relationships with everyone around him, adding to the rest of his family.
Margaret lives in the same luxury apartment complex as businesswoman Hilary (Sarayu Blue), whose marriage to David (Jack Huston) is quickly coming to a head due to infertility and infidelity issues. David’s habit on the night of Gus’s disappearance made matters worse, which drove the wedge between him and Hilary and created more tension with Margaret.
Mercy completes the trio. Mercy, a recent Columbia graduate, struggles to find a clear direction, floating on the fringes of the groups of friends and fancy events she works for as a caterer. His disconnection from his landscape stems from a general apathy but a deep sense of guilt for his role in the loss of Margaret.
Wang explains precisely how all those women are connected as they move forward and backward in time, showing us the preparation for Gus’s disappearance and its aftermath. Everyone and everything in this series revolves around this exclusive event and the aftermath, from the damaged to the most vulnerable to the most important of the world.
There’s a lot to love about Expats, namely the way Wang extracts deep emotional risks in even the most mundane of moments. In their hands, and thanks to the performances of Kidman, Blue, and Yoo, a ride to an elevator or an undeniable car ride can speak volumes.
Kidman does an admirable job shouldering Margaret’s grief, but it’s Blue and Yoo who steal the show. Blue’s Hilary is often outwardly restrained, her rehearsed smiles at business dinners barely hinting at personal turmoil beneath. Yet as that restraint crumbles over the show’s run, Blue unveils Hilary’s vulnerabilities with quiet, deliberate care. By contrast, Yoo’s Mercy feels wilder, masking her guilt with dark jokes until the pain overwhelms her and she lashes out. It’s a staggering performance, especially when coupled with Mercy’s navigation of her outsider status in Hong Kong.
Yes, all three women are foreigners, but Hilary and Margaret remain in a bubble of wealth and expats. Meanwhile, Mercy finds herself explaining to the citizens of Hong Kong that she is truly Korean-American and does not speak Cantonese. Identity as you progress through your stay in Hong Kong is expats’ most significant exploration of the effects of displacement.
Although the entire exhibition is set in Hong Kong, and Wang uses a series of striking shots of its skyscrapers and crowded streets, the city and its other inhabitants can take a back seat. It turns out to mimic the way Hilary and especially Margaret revel in Hong Kong: they spend most of their time in their bubble and very little time looking for compatibility with the city.
Expats also spend most of their adventure in this bubble, and only appears in its fifth episode, “Central. “Over the course of its hour-and-a-half runtime, “Central” dives deeper into the lives of supporting characters like Essie. (Ruby Ruiz) and Puri (Amelyn Pardenilla), Margaret and Hilary’s housewives. Originally from the Philippines, Essie and Puri are also expats and we get glimpses of their own communities and the families they might have left behind. The dating between Hilary and Puri is particularly fascinating, oscillating between employer, worker, and confidants, depending on Hilary’s emotional state.
Also highlighted in “Central” is political turmoil in Hong Kong, specifically the 2014 Umbrella Movement. Notably, Expats garnered controversy while shooting in Hong Kong, in part because of worries it would ignore valuable political context in favor of focusing on privileged foreigners, and in part because of an easing of COVID-19 restrictions for stars while filming. The spotlight on the Umbrella Movement, as well as references to the “old Hong Kong” dying, seem like responses to that criticism. Unfortunately, shoehorning them into a supersized episode towards the end of the series is an inelegant solution. Any political sentiment fails to get the space it needs to breathe. The same goes for Puri and Essie’s stories, which still feel sandwiched between their employers’ angst.
That’s not to say Margaret, Hilary, and Mercy’s stories are worth watching: they are, and they’re full of poignant reflections on what it’s like to try to work through grief when you’re so far from home. be. But they look much better if you take into account the city where they are developed. For example, in one striking sequence, a stall at a night market goes from an enchanting evening to a nightmare in a matter of seconds. Later, Wang walks away, showing the daily regime of the market in its entirety, and you realize how small (but no less heartbreaking) those stories are in the context of Hong Kong’s largest city. It’s a real double point: an expat, while compelling, may need a little more.
Expats is now streaming on Prime Video.
Belen Edwards is an entertainment journalist at Mashable. She covers fantasy and sci-fi themed movies and television, adaptations, animation, and much more.