The Projector | Actor Wu Ke-xi’s Cannes debut opens up whole new world for the Taiwanese talent
- Wu stars in Midi Z’s Me Too-themed thriller, Nina Wu, which she also wrote the screenplay for
- After more than a decade in the business, she is finally coming into her own and being offered diverse roles and challenges
As she swivels and strikes poses in a flowing red dress and shiny heels for a photographer on a Cannes backstreet, Wu Ke-xi looks every bit your typical film star who descends on the southern French city to promote their latest work. But there is more to the 36-year-old Taiwanese actor than meets the eye. Wu didn’t merely star in Myanmar-born director Midi Z’s thriller Nina Wu (2019), she also penned the original screenplay.
“It’s a fascinating, interesting feeling, as I’ve mostly travelled as a performer,” says Wu, after the photo shoot, one of many during the run-up to the premiere of Nina Wu in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival. “I’ve been watching all these movies over the years, absorbing things and being inspired by them. It all helped me in getting the drive to write this script.”
A graduate of the Department of Turkish Language and Culture at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, Wu counts Austrian art-house icon Michael Haneke, British auteur Andrea Arnold and Romanian New Wave stalwart Cristian Mungiu as her idols.
“Their films are very real and very powerful,” she says, citing Haneke’s brutal Funny Games (1997), Arnold’s gritty broken-family short Wasp (2003) and Mungiu’s communist-era abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) as personal favourites. “What’s most important, however, is that they reflect on human nature.