Review | Cannes 2019: Nina Wu film review – Midi Z’s psychological thriller takes on MeToo trauma
- Taiwanese filmmaker’s story of a bit-part actress who endures humiliation and violence on the road to stardom, and loses her sanity, is gripping and suspenseful
- Written by and starring Wu Ke-xi, it is slick, colour-saturated and highly stylised – and a departure from the director’s gritty films about rural poverty
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.