Expat's episode 5 is a movie unto itslf focusing on Filipino diaspora

On their day off, Hong Kong's domestic workers gather among themselves.

Episode 5 of the series Expats is the one we've been waiting for and probably the one people will remember.

The Nicole Kidman starer for Amazon is what convinced director Lulu Wang to take on the project with the permission to focus on the other expatriots, the domestic workers who work for Hong Kong's upper class.

The episode, titled “Central,” is 96 minutes long, more like a short film than a TV episode, and centers on the often hidden world of domestic workers, most of whom are from the Philippines. 

“I was so nervous about how I was going to be able to portray Hong Kong and making sure that the bubble of the expat world was intentional, that I was examining it as opposed to just indulging in it,” Wang tells Vanity Fair. “How do you both be in that world without celebrating it, but also not judging it either?”

FYI: Expats is available for streaming on Amazon.

When it came time to debut the series at the Toronto Film Festival last year, Wang chose this episode to show because it places the story in the context of a Hong Kong in transition, just like the expatriots who people the upper stories of the high-rise apartments dominating the former British colony.

In this special episode, the series goes outside the main storyline of the three American women -- Kidman who plays Margaret, Indian American Sarayu Blue portraying Hillary and Korean American Ji-young Yoo as Mercy -- and looks into the lives of the domestic workers who live in the periphery of the central story.

“Central,” Wang ventures beyond the world where the three women live, allowing the viewer to follow Margaret’s Filipino nanny Essie beyond the walls of Margaret’s home. Played by Ruby Ruiz, Essie is the “heart and soul” of the story, a warm caretaker who is also devastated by the disappearance of Margaret’s son. Puri, Hilary’s “helper” as the wealthy expats call them, is played by Amelyn Pardenilla, helps her employer through her marital woes.

This focus makes sense: the workers are expatriates, too. Hong Kong's domestic workers, mostly from Malaysia and the Philippines number in the hundreds of thousands. The domestic workers we see in the margins finally get to shine, as they spend their day off gossiping and pursuing their own interests.

On their day off, the workers gather to gossip, talk about family bck in their home countries, share their homeland cuisines and to provide emotional support for each other.

“Don’t be stupid. She’s not your friend,” a friend tells Puri, Hillary’s helper, about her relationship to Hillary. Another adds, “You can’t get too close. We know everything about these people, things their closest friends don’t even know.”

“The first time I saw them, I was blown away,” Wnag says in an interview. “Hundreds and thousands of women, and there’s such a sense of community—but they’re also there because they have nowhere else to go.”

“In order to show that the expat world is a bubble, I had to break out of that bubble and give it context,” wang says.

When Wang pitched her version of the series to Amazon, she started with the concept for the fifth episode. “It has to be a feature-length and it’s going to be shot differently, and I need the time and scope of an indie feature film for that episode,” she said, adding that Kidman’s character would be more or less in the background of that episode. To her surprise Kidman supported her and Amazon agreed in order to appease their international star.

The first four episodes of Expats show the American expatriots flitter about their high-rise apartments with their catered parties and international high-finance world. This episode contrasts the world of the elite to the world at street level there political revolution is bubbling and the working class diaspora created by the elite's business decisions.

RogerEbert.com writes: “'Expats' could have just been this, a feature-length film about these working-class women and the thin line between family member and employee they must walk."

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