Nicole Kidman in “Expats”
Amazon MGM Studios
At the heart of “Expats” is a mystery that underlies countless crime novels and countless other true crime series. On an otherwise unremarkable evening in Hong Kong, a young boy, Gus (Connor J. Gillman), goes missing while enjoying a night out with his family. The questions raised by this incident are obvious and urgent: What happened to him? Who was it? Where is he now?
But answers are much harder to find in Amazon Prime Video's Expats. In fact, the questions that the series really addresses are the ones that arise when it becomes clear that there will never be satisfactory answers, namely the question of how one can exist despite this uncertainty, injustice and unimaginable pain. The six-hour episodes follow this line of thought, exploring sexism and classism, home and family, and with so many big themes at play, some are bound to be better served than others. But the show always does its characters the favor of sitting with their messy truths rather than pushing them into clear storylines and clear solutions.
Foreigners
The conclusion: A sensitive drama with no easy answers.
Air date: Friday, January 26th (Prime Video)
Pour: Nicole Kidman, Sarayu Blue, Ji-young Yoo, Tiana Gowen, Bodhi del Rosario, Ruby Ruiz, Amelyn Pardenilla, Jack Huston
Creator: Lulu Wang, based on the book by Janice YK Lee
Directed by Lulu Wang (“The Farewell”) and based on the novel by Janice YK Lee, “Expats” largely revolves around three American women in Hong Kong. The first we meet is the aimless 25-year-old Mercy (an excellent Ji-young Yoo) in the form of her disembodied voice. “I want to know about the people who caused the tragedies. People like me,” she says over images of a crumpled car, a broken ski lift and pilots piloting a doomed plane. “Will they ever be forgiven?” Do they ever move on?”
It turns out that Mercy's inner monologue is directed at Margaret, Gus' mother, a kind of Nicole Kidman in Big Little Lies type played by Nicole Kidman herself. Margaret acts as if she is made of glass and capable of shattering at any moment, tearing apart anyone unlucky enough to be near her – usually Clarke (Brian Tee), the husband who struggles to hold things together while she falls apart. Since Gus' death a year earlier, Margaret has been so consumed by her grief that, as she puts it, she “has no room left in me” to care about anything else. She has distanced herself from her best friend and neighbor Hilary (Sarayu Blue), who is going through a midlife crisis amid her crumbling relationship with David (Jack Huston).
“Expats” is patient in its storytelling, which isn’t to say it’s boring — rather, it relies on the compassion of its writing and the rawness of its performances to hold our attention as the three leads circle around their awkward emotions or within their ugly ones Consequences lash out. The series follows Margaret as she lies sobbing in the tub of a cheap apartment she rented to escape her own family, and how she forces her remaining children into her uncontrollable fear that something else will happen to them Instilled fear and terror. It gives Mercy plenty of room to explore the rough edges of an ongoing affair with a man she somehow seems to hate, and Hilary time to come to terms with her ambivalence about marriage, the possibility of parenthood, and everything else she's been told was that she should have to deal with them all her life.
And in a way that elevates it above the usual prestige domestic drama, Expats extends that insatiable empathy beyond these three families to the rest of the world around them. Wang's camera captures details that aren't necessarily relevant from a plot perspective, but these could be glimpses of other untold stories that directly compete with the ones we're following: the mop being thrown over a door by an unseen worker The chauffeur is snoozing in a car while his customer dines in a restaurant. In the penultimate episode, a 97-minute work that could almost work as a standalone feature, Expats follows that curiosity into corners of Hong Kong that its American characters have largely ignored, detouring into a neighborhood of upscale Chinese citizens. about the pro-democracy protests swarming the streets, about the crowds of Filipino domestic workers exchanging gossip under a bridge.
Along the way, it brings out the perspectives of previously peripheral characters, like Hilary's house helper Puri (Amelyn Pardenilla), who is blessed with a beautiful singing voice that she hopes will offer her a ticket to a better life. And it sheds new light on relationships we've already seen from the other side. Margaret can insist all she wants that her maid Essie (Ruby Ruiz) is “like family” to her. But it never seemed to occur to Margaret or anyone else in her actual family to include Essie in their collective mourning for Gus, a boy she raised from birth, or to imagine that Essie might like more time with her actual family would spend the Philippines.
The downside to the detour is that a single episode doesn't seem to be nearly enough time to explore all of these rich characters and communities, let alone the sensitive politics they address. As exciting as it is for Essie or Puri to finally have some time in the spotlight, or as poignant as it is to hear about a protester arguing with his frightened mother about his determination to fight for a better future, they are sent back to the U.S. offside for a finale that re-focuses the more privileged central trio. But expats generally seem to be aware that their perspective is that of an expat. “It’s not your fight and never was,” snaps Charly (Bonde Sham), a friend of the protesters, when Mercy tries to join her. “You are a tourist. It doesn't affect your future. Not really. You can just leave.”
Expats don't pretend to know what Mercy should do about it. Nor does it offer a satisfying resolution to Gus' fate or a new beginning for characters who have already been through so much. When Hilary uses the generally screwed-up state of the world as an argument against children: “Why would I want to do that to another soul?” – it both acknowledges that she is complaining from a privileged perspective and that her frustration is entirely justified.
But the strange comfort that Expats offers lies in the acknowledgment of all that pain and the grace it offers to the deeply flawed souls who endure it. The series reminds us that none of us are completely alone when we suffer and struggle and are unnerved by the awfulness of existence – because so many others are experiencing the same thing and the world will keep turning anyway. It's not necessarily the happiest or most heartwarming prospect. In Wang's generous hands, it still becomes life-affirming.