Cannes 2019: Nina Wu film review Midi Zs psychological thriller takes on MeToo trauma

Review | Cannes 2019: Nina Wu film review – Midi Z’s psychological thriller takes on MeToo trauma

4/5 stars

Well-known on the international festival circuit for his features and documentaries about the rural poor of Chinese ancestry in his birth country, Myanmar, Taiwanese filmmaker Midi Z’s fifth feature appears to be a radical departure.

Nina Wu revolves around a bit-part actress’ difficult ascent to stardom and the torture and trauma she endures along the way. It’s a slick, colour-saturated and highly stylised psychological thriller that looks miles away from his gritty rural-poor oeuvre.

However, Z’s film, which received its premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, is similar in one respect to his previous films in its representation of the exploitation in human labour. In this case, he shows the humiliation and outright violence suffered by a woman in a sexualised and steadfastly patriarchal profession.

With a screenplay by actress Wu Ke-xi ( The Road to Mandalay ) – who spoke of being inspired both by her own experience as a struggling actress and by the Harvey Weinstein sexual-abuse scandal across the Atlantic – Nina Wu is taut, topical and terrifying. It would be reductive to describe it as #MeToo movie, however.

The film, in which Wu is a tour de force in the title role, covers social oppression in multiple forms – not just the travails of her professional career, but the perilous position of her family, and a frowned-upon past romance.

The story begins with the aspiring actress struggling to make ends meet in Taipei, having stooped to doing sleazy live-streaming sessions to earn her upkeep. Her big break comes with a role in an espionage drama set in the 1960s, but there’s a catch: Wu will appear in explicit sex scenes involving full-frontal nudity. Her passive-aggressive agent coerces her into accepting the part.

It’s during this midnight meeting that Wu starts to experience a mental breakdown, the first sign of which is seeing an out-of-place iguana lurking in a lampshade. During the making of the film she is slapped by the director and nearly dies when a pyrotechnics scene goes awry.

Wu has barely begun to enjoy her fame when her sanity splinters; she fears she is being stalked by a mysterious, menacing woman (Kimi Hsia Yu-chiao). A trip to her hometown to visit her bankrupt father and ailing mother reveals past schisms, including a reunion with a former flame (Vivian Sung Yu-hua of Our Times fame). The hallucinations never let up as Wu unlocks her suppressed psyche and considers the price she has paid for her success.

Florian Zinke’s slow-moving camerawork and Lim Giong’s haunting soundtrack help build the suspense that makes seeing Nina Wu a gripping experience.

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