Expats Exposes Hong Kong's Upper Class & Underbelly

Nicole Kidman's Expats Is More Than A 'Big Little Lies Set In Hong Kong'

Lulu Wang’s Expats employs a personal tragedy to wrestle with experiences of grief, greed, guilt, class, immigration and racism through the people who moved to, live in or want to leave Hong Kong, writes Joshua Muyiwa

YES, THE RUMOURS ARE TRUE. In Lulu Wang’s Expats (streaming on Amazon Prime), Nicole Kidman continues her streak of portraying elegant, elite, white women in the throes of a secret sorrow that can’t be healed by all the love or money in the world.

Instead of moneyed Monterey and marital troubles in Big Little Lies; spa treatments and spiritual seductions in Nine Perfect Strangers; and murder and more marital troubles in The Undoing, Expats takes Kidman to Hong Kong. And yes, this is a little bit of a spoiler — but from the minute Kidman’s face appears on screen in the first episode it is immediately clear — her secret sorrow, this time around, is the disappearance of her child. Wang’s Expats exquisitely employs this cataclysmic personal tragedy to wrestle with experiences of grief, greed, guilt, class, immigration, racism through the people who moved to, live in, and want to leave Hong Kong. And in a compliment to the director, Kidman is absorbed — she’s critical but not all-consuming — into the great storytelling.

Expats is set in a tightly-knitted community of wealthy expats living in Hong Kong in 2014 (its source material is Yasmin YK Lee’s 2016 novel Expatriates). Here, we meet Magaret Woo (Kidman), a landscape architect who quietly resents giving up her job to follow her doting husband Clarke (Brian Tee) to Hong Kong for a promotion in his. With their two children Daisy and Philip, and the family’s long-time nanny and “helper” Essie (Ruby Ruiz), they live in ‘The Peak’ — the most prestigious apartment block on the territory. There’s also Margaret’s good friend and neighbour Hilary Starr, played by Sarayu Rao Blue, an Indian-American expat coming to terms with her crumbling marriage to David (Jack Huston). And then there’s Mercy Cho (Ji-young Yoo), a 20-something Korean-American who works odd jobs, and whose impulsive decisions bring tragedy upon herself, Margaret and Hilary.

Over six episodes, Expats languorously weaves the trajectories of these three characters who are most directly affected by the disappearance of the child at the centre. But the episode that shines the brightest is the fifth one. In this 90-minute episode, the show shifts our attention from the rich people, and brings those at the margins onto centrestage. We see Hong Kong through the eyes of Margaret’s “helper” Essie and Hilary’s Puri (Amelyn Pardenilla), who are superlative in their subtle, solid understanding of their characters’ place in the world. The rain is oppressive and incessant, yet these working-class women — on their weekly off from serving their wealthy employers — meet each other and make community. This episode kickoffs with Puri practising to become a pop-star, with a choir singing an a capella rendition of Katy Perry’s “Roar” that is perfection. Under the bridges and flyovers of Hong Kong, these “helpers” — seated on cardboard boxes and plastic folding chairs — play cards, swap scandalous stories about their bosses, and navigate the anxieties of being away from their own families.

Hong Kong is hot, hectic, humming with life — the kind of life that the rich people high up on ‘The Peak’ isolate themselves from. Through the eyes of the working-class women, one understands the way cities are inviting to everyone, the ways they make room for everyone, and that it holds the dreams of everyone across class lines. Essie and Puri are crucial to the lives of the employers but there’s the tug of their own desires. Puri wants to be a world-famous singer after auditioning for a reality television competition show, Essie wants to have the chance to show love to her grandson back in the Philippines since she couldn’t be with her own son because she was working to give him a better life. We are witness to the everyday stomping of their personal dreams that domestic staff have to live with, and that they must still keep a part of themselves secret.

Before I started watching Expats, a friend tried to be snappy and tried to sum it up with, “It’s just Big Little Lies set in Hong Kong”. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the fifth episode, it might have just been that: another surgical, sumptuous take down of the rich people on the peaks in our societies. But, in the end, Expats manages to do something more than other prestige television shows. It allows Hong Kong to seep into the storytelling and scenery. And in making this choice, the stories of the working-class women who dim their lives to make ours in the world possible colour all of the episodes — their sacrifice and our selfishness is elegantly exposed in Expats.

Stream Expats Here

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