Forget all the other episodes of “Expats”—a six-episode, limited series show on Amazon Prime starring Nicole Kidman—and skip straight to the meat of the story, found in Episode 5.
Clocking at 96 minutes, episode 5 could very well be a stand-alone, feature-length movie.
In it, Kidman’s story arc is still there, but the stars of this episode are the Pinoy OFWs (Overseas Foreign Workers) Puri (newcomer Amelyn Pardenilla) and Essie (Ruby Ruiz), working in Hong Kong as domestic helpers and nannies.
The episode opens on a rainy Sunday—usually the only day off for many foreign workers—as they get together under a bridge, huddled under umbrellas, with makeshift tables made of cardboard boxes, sitting on plastic stools and folding chairs.
Even though they are packed like sardines, they have a fun time playing Bingo, dishing the latest Marites gossip, sharing buckets of Jollibee Chicken Joy.
This is their time to be themselves: to sing, dance, play, eat, and have a chance to hang out with other Filipinos.
This is how they live overseas, trying to make enough money to send to families back home.
Expats captures all the nuances so beautifully, never shying away from the harsh realities of what really happens when Filipina women are forced to work overseas, away from their own families.
As the rain turns into a full-blown typhoon, the lives of the rich families being served by domestic helpers intertwine, ripples forming as family decisions are made that affect the Filipino workers in the movie.
Much like the film “Parasite”, the rain doesn’t fall equally on the rich and the poor.
While the rich call it a “blessing”, the poor call it a curse.
The rain falls incessantly throughout the movie: it’s loud in the OFW’s world, but up in the ritzy “Peak” neighbourhood of Hong Kong, inside restaurants the rich frequent, there’s an absence of umbrellas.
They enjoy indoor entertainment, eat in restaurants, wait under covered overhangs while their drivers pick them up.
The sound of thunder and rain is all but muffled in their world, a pretty backdrop as they look out their windows.
A well-dressed white woman shops inside a high-end store while Essie walks past the store window, finishing a FaceTime call with her family in the Philippines.
Her son admonishes her for working on a Sunday, her day off, telling her to go back home to the Philippines: they have enough money now.
“We really wish you’d just come home”, his son says.
As Essie opens the door to her employer’s apartment, Kidman’s character ignores her kids’ pleas for her to make dinner.
She waits until Essie comes home, and promptly orders her to heat up the pizza.
The son runs up warmly to Essie and says, “can you heat up some pandesal?”
Keep in mind, it’s her supposed day off, yet as soon as she comes home, she is expected to make dinner for everyone.
When Kidman’s character decides she’s had enough of their trials in Hong Kong and wants to go back to America, Essie rejoices for but a moment, calling her family that she’s finally coming home.
Until her employer sits her down, telling her that Essie is “family”, that she is loved by the whole family, and therefore should go with them to the U.S.
What makes Essie decide to go with them? Is she more loyal to her employers than to her own family?
The show does not resolve its issues in a neat little package.
Relationships fray, the future of traumatized families are all but unknown, the characters lost in their own grief.
We never know how they end up. And perhaps, that’s just like in real life.
No one really knows the outcome of things.
However, the opening song in episode 5 somehow gives us a clue.
A group of Pinays rehearse the song “Eye of the Tiger” by Katy Perry.
The director, Lulu Wang, deliberately chose the song perhaps for the following lyrics:
“You hear my voice, you hear that sound, like thunder gonna shake the ground.
You held me down, but I got up, get ready cause I’ve had enough.
I see it all, I see it now, I’ve got the eye of the tiger.
Fighter, dancing through the fire, ’cause I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar.”
We Filipinos take comfort and hope in that message: we are fighters, dancing through the fire. One day, you’ll hear us roar.
Expats the movie is the movie adaptation of the book “The Expatriates” by Janice Y.K. Lee.
