At the end of episode one in Lulu Wang’s miniseries “Expats,” a grieving Margaret (Nicole Kidman) and her friend Hilary (Sarayu Blue) dance to Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” in a noodle shop. As the pairs’ bare feet sashay across the flooring and their flouncing window reflections are abruptly sliced off by worn menus taped up to the walls, the cooks in the kitchen watch on unfazed. It’s a quiet and lively scene, the first one where the two women, guards down, are having a good time. But it’s also wild — because it’s as though every dance move Margaret makes feels as though it could lead to a complete breakdown, because two foreign women are making a local eatery their late-night disco, because they have a personal driver in a luxury car just outside at their whim, ready to swoop them wherever they wish to go.
Who possesses the ability to live like this? Well expats. Shorthand for “expatriate,” the term refers to an individual who lives outside of their native country and usually intends to return to their country of origin. Wang’s series follows three, Margaret (Kidman), Hilary (Blue) and Mercy (Ji-Young Yoo), all of who call Hong Kong home, though knowing it’s only temporary. Margaret and Hilary make up the typical expatriate, very well-to-do, households-run-by-low-paid-helpers — the former living in the city due to her husband Clarke’s (Brian Tee) job and the latter because of her partner David’s (Jack Huston) law career. On the other end of the spectrum, Mercy has ended up in a weary Hong Kong apartment alone, the recent-ish college grad insisting on needing a “fresh start.”
This intricate mise-en-scène is where “Expats” takes off. The hardship of the series is a multitude of things, but the catalyst of it all is the disappearance of Margaret’s youngest son,…
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