In the category of series with the worst titles, Expats (Expats in Spanish) would get an honorable mention. It is extremely unfriendly when referring to those migrants who, because they belong to rich countries, are considered not to fit the label of immigrants, which is exactly what they are. And, considering that Expats was sold as a series about the lives of foreigners settled in Hong Kong, fear led to speculation that such a title would belong to an irritating series.
Watching the first episodes, however, you understand that Lulu Wang, the woman behind the series, is aware of the meaning and connotations of the term expat. The miniseries focuses on three women not born there, two of them with drivers and maids always at their disposal, and the social reading is present in each chapter, even when the dramatic conflicts are not directly related to this class perspective.
Margaret (Nicole Kidman) misses being a garden designer, her profession, since she settled in such a dense and vertical city. But that’s the least of her problems. While she prepares a party for her husband Clarke (Brian Tee), she must deal with the grief of a family tragedy. In parallel, her neighbors Hilary (Sarayu Blue) and David (Jack Huston) have a marriage that is falling apart, partly due to his infidelity with Mercy (Ji-young Yoo), a lost young woman who takes Hong Kong as her her particular purgatory.
Nicole Kidman, who in 2017 did one of the best jobs of her career when she landed on television and produced and starred in Big Little Lies, has managed to find and produce another vehicle at the height of her talent after the unforgettable The Undoing and the lesser Perfect Nine unknown. Expatriates, after all, is what she has always looked for on television: a drama with female characters with substance, moments of brilliance for the performers and an adult treatment of women’s conflicts and drives.
She, for the record, is not the absolute star of the show. Sarayu Blue conveys confidence with her eyes, moving through plots about not wanting to have children or losing the only member of her family, and Yoo is a revelation. Her existential crisis is focused from the block and she knows how to transmit it with a subtle force, establishing a clear and coherent contrast between the different facets of Mercy that we know.
And, as if it were a quartet, Wang, who acts as scriptwriter and director, praises Hong Kong from its intrinsic color and the search for vegetation so that the planes breathe. In an audiovisual so accustomed to putting filters on sequences and recycling geographical clichés, she offers a partial portrait of Hong Kong (the expatriate and wealthy, of course) naturally. There is no desperation to locate, there is no prejudice, only good taste.
With the episodes broadcast to date, it is impossible to know how far the notes on class dynamics will go. The indifferent look of the driver when they talk to him, the maid bringing a cold tea to David who doesn’t even thank him, the latent rivalry between Margaret and Essie (Ruby Ruiz), or the comments of the especially elitist friends, who warn Margaret that Essie “is not part of the family” as she likes to say so much, these are not random moments.
You also have to see how the dynamic develops between the three women and the individual and interrelated conflicts of all of them, which Wang observes from close quarters. But, for now, Expatriates is that pleasure that those of us who love adult dramas need, especially when Wang exhibits the proud ambition of telling us three female conflicts.
