Tag: Midi Z

Nina Wu

Posted on by victorfraga

Nina is young and pretty. she has left rural Taiwan and moved to glitzy Taipei in search of a promising opportunity as a film star. She’s advised, however, that the role includes full frontal nudity in bed with two men. She’s told: “if that makes you uncomfortable don’t even audition for the it”. She auditions and wins. But that’s just the start of her problems. The menacing filmmaker manipulates her constantly. He emotionally harasses her in order to elicit the strongest emotions. At times, it’s unclear whether Nina’s acting or genuinely frightened.

What starts out as a didactic #MeToo statement about abuse in the film industry gradually develops into something far more complex and sinister. Some of the sequences within the film being made border absurdity. Nina is on a dinghy full of boxes. The police arrives and orders the shooting to stop. The boxes explode and a bloodied Nina jumps into the water. She nearly dies. The credits roll. Maybe this is a film within a film within a film. There’s a also dream within a dream within a dream. The layers of reality, allegory and imagination blend seamlessly.

Ke-xi is spectacular. She has the power to convey the most varies emotions with her facial expressions. She will make you laugh and cry. And she can navigate comfortably through the film’s various narratives layers, confounding viewers about her real emotions.

The story zigzags back and forth in time, and in the second half of the movie we learn the details of the extremely bizarre audition. The producer pits women against each other, turning the aspiring film stars into vile bitches (literally). The invidious female who ended second seeks to exact revenge on Nina. We also learn that Nina is a Lesbian in a relationship with a woman in her hometown back in the countryside. This is a very significant point, as Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalise gay marriage just a few days ago. Nina, however, prioritises her career ahead of the romance. Perhaps because she thinks that the country isn’t prepared to accept a Lesbian actress just yet.

The film is dotted with strange imagery, bordering the surreal. A gecko moves inside a lamp. Nina is tortured on a stretcher inside a beauty clinic. She runs outside covered in plastic wrap and strangers snap her with their phone. Plus the audition and filming are extremely bizarre. And funny. Nina Wu balances out tension and humour extremely well.

Stick around until the very end of this 103-minute film. A lot comes full circle in the last sequence. This isn’t just a psychological thriller dotted with the bizarre gimmicks and narrative tricks. It has something very serious to say.

Nina Wu showed in the 72th Cannes International Film Festival, as part of the Un Certain Regard section (2019), when this piece was originally written. This isn’t the only film in the event dealing with a male director humiliating and manipulating the film actresses. Gaspar Noe does it too, if from a very different and far more disturbing perspective.

The film premieres in the UK in October in the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF). On Mubi on Tuesday, July 13th (2021)

The Road to Mandalay

Posted on by victorfraga

Being smuggled illegally into a country is hardly a romantic situation. Yet this is how Lianqing and Guo meet, and they develop profound fondness of each other, despite their very different personalities and the hardship of their predicament. The two Burmese citizens eventually find a job in their chosen destination of Thailand: Lianqing works as a dishwasher in a second-class restaurant, while her male dalliance works long hours in a textile factory.

The Road to Mandalay is not a movie pleasant to watch. It’s willfully bleak and dreary. It’s dark and harsh, much like the lives of these two illegal aliens (and many others around them). Darkness is central in every sense: spiritual, legal and physical. This darkness suffocates them, but in a way it also serves as a disguise, as a means of protecting them from the police. Such people must keep a low profile in order to avoid deportation, and their fear is is constant.

Lianqing is the more ambitious of the two, and she sets herself on an ambitious task: getting a fake ID. This would enable her to find a better job, away from the filthy walls of the fetid and dismal kitchen where she works. Guo is more indolent, and so the friction between the two begins to escalate.

At one point Guo gives Lianqing a piece of jewelry but he soon has to reveal that it’s fake. This comes as a major relief to Lianqing: she would perceive a real piece of jewelry as unnecessary squandering. She wants to waste no money until she has the much-coveted phony document. It costs 300,000 Thai Bahts (roughly £6,000). A large fortune for people in their condition. Will Lianqing have to engage in the sex industry in order to get this sum? This thought is at the forefront of Guo’s mind.

The camera is almost entirely static throughout the film, conveying a sense of stillness and even imprisonment. This is combined with humble and derelict settings. There’s some awkward beauty in the subtle details: a sticker behind a ceiling fan rotating very slowly, Lianqing changing behind a translucent white curtain, and so on. Overall, this is still a very gloomy and even laborious movie. But do stick to the end for a real punch-in-the-face moment, a sordid reminder of the harsh and desperate choices illegal immigrants often have to make.

What’s clear from The Road to Mandalay is that the legal status of human beings is almost always contingent on money. Immigrants are entirely dehumanised by the economic argument. There is no room for tolerance and altruism. You are worth what you have in your pocket.

Watch The Road to Mandalay just below: