Expats Season 1 Review: A Family Drama in a Parallel World Prime Video Series
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Ji-young Yoo, Jack Huston, Sarayu RaoSarayu Blue, Brian Tee, Flora Chan
Director: Lulu Wang
Streaming Platform: Prime Video
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)
Expats, the Prime Video limited series, has reached its finale with the sixth episode, Home, in which the journey of the three protagonists reaches a turning point. Created, written, and directed by Lulu Wang, starring Oscar winner Nicole Kidman (also executive producer), Sarayu Blue, Ji-young, Brian Tee, and Jack Huston. The series, based on the international best-seller The Expatriates written by Janice YK Lee, is available with all episodes on Prime Video. The Expats TV miniseries is created by Lulu Wang, who made her directorial debut in 2016 with the film Posthumous and gained greater recognition from audiences with the subsequent film, The Farewell. The main cast of Expats alongside Nicole Kidman includes Brian Tee, Sarayu Blue, Jack Huston, and Ji-young Yoo.
Consisting of 6 episodes in total, Expats landed on Prime Video with the first two episodes simultaneously, while the remaining four were distributed on a single weekly basis. The protagonist Nicole Kidman and the author of the novel, Janice YK Lee, also take part in the production of the TV miniseries, created by Amazon MGM Studios in collaboration with Blossom Films and Local Time Picrow. Leading the cast of Expats is a big name like that of Nicole Kidman, also executive producer of the series. Bright star of the cinematic firmament whose light, after the glories of the early 2000s (Moulin Rouge! The Hours, Dogville), had begun to fade with participation in failed successes ( The Golden Compass ) and films that were not at all memorable ( Grace of Monaco ). A decline that was followed by a subsequent television rebirth, thanks to prestige HBO series such as Big Little Lies and The Undoing. Precisely in this category of quality TV – which draws heavily on the canons of certain independent dramatic cinema, with authorial aspirations – we would like to place this new Amazon production.
Expats Season 1 Review: The Story Plot
The plot of Expats is essentially divided into three distinct and at the same time intertwined scenarios, due to the connections between the main characters of the story. At the center of the scene is the Woo family made up of Margaret, Clarke, and their children. Due to Clarke’s work, the entire Woo family moves to Hong Kong for some time. A place that ends up keeping the Woos bound for longer than expected, as they are victims of a terrible event that leaves them painfully affected. On another front are husband and wife David and Hilary Starr, longtime friends of the Woos. A couple who, through ups and downs, try to find their family stability, but without ever truly succeeding.
Also, not only due to a sort of boomerang effect due to the misfortune that has befallen their friends. Finally, in yet another area there is the young Mercy Cho, fresh out of college and an expatriate in China like all the other protagonists of the story, in an attempt to emancipate herself and improve her lifestyle. By pure chance, Mercy’s life intersects with that of the Woo and Starr families, a meeting that soon turns out to be both a blessing and a curse at the same time. Mercy’s arrival in the lives of the two families will kick off the dramatic tragedy where it all begins and in which everyone will end up getting involved, albeit in different ways.
Expats Season 1 Review and Analysis
The TV miniseries Expats develops on two different timelines that alternate past and present, to gradually tell what happened to Woo in several stages. At the beginning of the story, a year has already passed since the tragic event that struck Clarke and Margaret’s family and from the first sequences you can easily understand what it is about. However, the specific details of how, when, and even why things happened in a certain way are not known. In this sense, the Expats miniseries plays a lot in revealing the plot little by little, between fleeting flashbacks and current sequences, to offer new pieces of the puzzle in each episode useful for reconstructing the dynamics of what happened. The story of Expats also shows two different realities, divided between the comfortable life of the Woo and Starr families and the search for their place in the world made of sacrifices undertaken by Mercy.
Margaret and Hilary are two emancipated career women who lack for nothing, while in reality, they are unable to completely take flight as their respective husbands somehow clip their wings. Despite the social and personal differences that the two friends have compared to Mercy, the latter is not so different from either of them. The girl moved to Hong Kong to get away from an oppressive mother who raised her based on popular beliefs and because of this Mercy has always felt conditioned in her way of being. Expats also want to compare another context, mainly linked to the sense of guilt of human beings. A factor that can trigger in anyone regardless of their lifestyle, family, bank account, or type of job. Also in this case, the three main women of the miniseries are tormented by remorse, by the fear of making mistakes, of not having made the right choices in time, and some ways, of having taken the wrong direction in their lives.
The crux of the issue is not only having become aware of one’s limits but above all being able to understand if there is a way to go back. The story of Expats begins with the story of tragedies that have affected other people, while Mercy’s voice in the background wonders if society is willing to forgive those who make mistakes. Expats is a title that manages to involve on an emotional level because it touches on realities common to most people. The drama experienced by the Woo family is a type of situation that can manifest itself in different ways and forms where the disappearance of someone sometimes coincides with the disappearance of oneself. In the Amazon miniseries, everything stems from a tangible loss, an event that later becomes the scapegoat for everything that happens from that point on. While in truth before the tragedy that involves all the protagonists, their lives were already gradually losing pieces along the way.
Each of the characters emigrates elsewhere essentially to guarantee a better future, yet all of them most of the time continue to feel out of place in every context. This happens because changing place is not enough to change yourself too. There is a lot to digest especially for Margaret, Hilary, and Mercy as having everything does not always mean no longer wanting anything, just as having nothing does not imply wanting everything. Expats focuses on the eternal struggle between right and wrong, through which each character must be able to establish how far a human being is allowed to go. Is it right or wrong not to want children or to wish you hadn’t had them when you have them? Is it right to immediately take back control of your life after a serious loss or should you wait a certain period before reacting? Is it right or wrong to lie to a person you love for fear of revealing your desires or your true way of being?
The Expats miniseries is a whirlwind of these and many other questions that the characters ask themselves daily or through some rare confidence, to try to understand if the real problem is them or the society in which they live. A society that has ended up conditioning human beings through stereotypes and tailor-made models. And because of this more and more often each person is no longer able to simply be himself, living in constant terror of being judged and consequently “expatriated” from the common world. In the Expats TV miniseries, as the title itself suggests, “expatriates” are not just those who have left their native country and moved to Hong Kong. It is a much broader and deeper concept, which extends to anyone who is not comfortable with the world, with themselves, and with the place – both physical and emotional – in which they find themselves.
An internal conflict that in some cases torments both the individual and the community, especially because Expats also bring China’s political and social problems to the stage through those who fight for their rights. In Expats, paradoxically, some Chinese citizens are impatient in their homeland because they do not have the freedom that is rightfully theirs. While those who come from outside feel more at home in Hong Kong, rather than in the place where they were born and raised. A type of situation that also brings contrasts between these two realities, even though they are part of the same context. Charly, Mercy’s partner, reproaches the latter that as an expatriate she is free to leave the country whenever she wants, unlike her. And at the same time, she claims that the rights she fights for in the streets have never been a real battle for Mercy either. An implicit way in which Charly identifies herself as the only one fighting her wars, while in reality in that square there are dozens of people with the same problems as her.
From Charly’s words, it almost seems that being born in two different places is almost Mercy’s fault as if she were the luckier one between the two. Despite what Charly believes about her, her life and that of Mercy are very similar, because it is certainly not a passport that can make a person free in all respects. Lei Mercy has also been fighting her battles for a long time, ever since she left Korea to acquire the freedom that she was unable to have in her homeland. A freedom that in the end, however, she cannot find even in China. Mercy only gained independence by being able to make her own choices independently without family pressure, but she still ended up making bad choices. Thus, learning at her expense that sometimes it’s not the place that makes the difference, but it all depends on oneself. The same life lesson that Margaret and Hilary also learn on their respective journeys. Ironically, Mercy, although without any malice, after having taken away Margaret’s child and Hilary’s husband, later ends up having a child with David herself.
Despite this, Margaret and Hilary cannot help but feel guilty for this epilogue, rather than relegating the responsibility for everything to Mercy alone. Both can’t help but wonder how things would have turned out if they had made other decisions previously. No one can know, because there is no going back. The only certain thing is that every choice we make inevitably affects those around us. And it is not enough to “expatriate” elsewhere to erase one’s past. The Expats TV miniseries initially manages to intrigue and involve despite the presence of overly muffled locations and obvious clichés. Nicole Kidman once again leaves her mark with her chameleon-like ability to immerse herself in every different role, making her character as fascinating as it is disturbing as always. The rest of the cast also does an excellent job although the main and most visible characters turn out to be the three female protagonists.
The landscape photography and the settings that alternate between dark scenarios and luxurious resorts take the audience on a tumultuous virtual journey from the noisy Hong Kong market to the silence of the empty apartment where Margaret takes refuge. The sometimes slow pace of narration in a context like that of Expats becomes an advantage in favor of the story itself, as it allows the viewer to immerse himself one step at a time into the drama on which the entire plot revolves. However, in the last two episodes, there are excessive lengths in certain sequences that are too redundant for viewing purposes. Furthermore, the linear plot suddenly ends up diverting elsewhere, focusing too much on some topics not better explored previously.
A questionable narrative choice as right towards the end you get the feeling of almost being watching another television title, due to the sudden change of direction albeit inherent to the global context. The conclusion of Expats manages in extremis to get back on track where it was slipping, concluding the TV series with the same bittersweet taste with which it began. “Expatriate” people looking for their happy place in the world. The existential journey of the three “expatriate” protagonists told by Lulu Wang says a lot about the lives of all of us, about the case that moves our lives, in a continuous sliding door that can lead to the most unspeakable tragedy or the greatest joy. As in the storm that hits Hong Kong in the penultimate episode some resist, fight, waiting for the quiet dawn of the new day. Expats is supported by the brilliant performances of Nicole Kidman, Sarayu Blue, and Ji-young Yoo and by a writing that takes the viewer by the hand into the lives of the protagonists, which takes the time to tell every nuance of pain and beauty, a series that it speaks of hope, rebirth, of coexistence with suffering, of tortuous paths towards happiness (hopefully).
Added to this desolate picture is an unbearable pain, that of the disappearance of a child, in some ways even worse than death. A nagging doubt is capable of destroying a relationship, especially if tensions and resentments of this type are already present. Expats, unfortunately, too often stage these dynamics in a very cold way, making it quite difficult to empathize with its protagonists. Probably, even their wealth and extremely bourgeois context do not help to make them particularly likeable. The series has its best moments when it focuses on some of the supporting characters, such as the maids during their day off (picnic tables set under a bridge, sheltered from the torrential rain, while you have lunch gossiping amiably about your masters and their problems, or singing Katy Perry songs. One of the most memorable images of all the episodes).
Added to this is a historical-political context used as a mere background, which has little or no influence on the events narrated (the miniseries is set in 2014, during the protests in Hong Kong of the so-called Umbrella Movement). A choice that is ultimately sterile, whose contribution to history offers little more than some old smartphone models. Expats would like to be a profound intimate drama, but it fails precisely when it should delve into the heart of the tragedy experienced by its characters and, consequently, in making us truly involved in their pain. The choice of the serial format certainly doesn’t help either, with episodes that feel like fillers; perhaps a feature film would have been the most suitable way to transpose this story. All that remains is a setting full of potential, some good performances, and a few flashes of style.
Expats Season 1 Review: The Last Words
Prime Video’s Expats TV miniseries presents itself as a well-packaged product in its small way while telling a terrible family drama contained within the daily dramas of every human being. Although towards the end the main story seems to get lost in other previously postponed subplots, the conclusion of Expats manages to bring the miniseries back on the initial iron tracks. Amazon is counting on Nicole Kidman to follow her latest HBO television exploits. Unfortunately, this miniseries, centered on some expatriates in Hong Kong, fails to make us identify with the drama experienced by its protagonists, with whom it is difficult to empathize given their coldness. The charm of a parallel world remains made up of anonymous interiors of a luxury residential complex, impervious to the socio-cultural context that surrounds it. The serial format doesn’t help, with long episodes that feel like filler; perhaps a feature film would have been the right choice to transpose Janice YK Lee’s novel.
Expats Season 1 Review: A Family Drama in a Parallel World Prime Video Series - Filmyhype
Director: Lulu Wang
Date Created: 2024-02-23 15:36
3.5
Pros
- Convincing cast
- Excellent photography
- The importance given to the introspection of the human being
Cons
- The presence of some clichés partially penalizes the overall plot
- Towards the end there are some excessive lengthenings and a brief hijacking of the central plot
