Eight years after her move to Taiwan, Nina Wu (Wu Ke-Xi) finally gets the audition she needs to jump-start her career: “Romance of the Spies,” a 1960s-era spy noir. To her discomfort, after exclusively working on short films and small projects, this glamorous new role calls for full frontal nudity and explicit sex scenes, including a threesome. As Nina acclimates to the bizarre world of the film set, in which comfort and safety are deprioritized in favor of art, she also grapples with family illness, the return of an old flame (Vivian Sung), and the mysterious recurrence of a menacing figure who haunts her dreams (Kimi Hsia).
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In “Nina Wu,” which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, director Midi Z explores the depths of a post-#MeToo era drama, first confounding reality and fiction with a film-within-a-film, then pivoting to the underlying trauma that accompanies living out one’s dream. For Nina, whose worlds collapse and compress into one distressing unreality, that dream is not so far from a nightmare.
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Cast in stark, selectively saturated light by cinematographer Florian Zinke, “Nina Wu” paints an austere portrait of the average film set. The director of “Romance” takes brutal measures to produce the effect he deserves, sternly reminding Nina to consider the stages of emotion with the mechanical precision of a machine assembly manual. At times, he even resorts to force, his hands clasped tightly around Nina’s throat, or his palm smacking her cheek, as if beating the directions into her. (Nina’s sharply-worded rebuttal earned a hearty round of applause from the audience at the premiere.) Nina is the type who wants, earnestly, to perform well, a trait that makes her a perfect target of these on-set abuses.
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Midi Z lays out this unfortunately timely dynamic with a certain degree of awkward polemic shuffling. It’s a little too easy to identify Nina as the victim of her situation, which lessens the blow of the film’s final revelation, as explained by the enigmatic villain, who turns out to have a specific cause for personal vendetta. Indeed, how obvious is a villain who kills the dog and tries to murder the mother? Likewise, the creepy executive producer and the tyrannical director are familiar types by now, with the casting couch mythos and hotel room coercion demystified by several major press outlets’ investigative exposés. So too, even, is the idea that another woman might, by way of internalized patriarchy, be coaxed into sabotaging another woman in order to get ahead.
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The counterpoints are slightly indelicate, here, in a movie with its morals so plainly laid out from the first frame. If only the film’s screenwriters had read up on their Andrea Dworkin, perhaps — they’d know that a more nuanced take might have plumbed the hidden abuses that masquerade themselves as parts of everyday life, those that weren’t so easily identified as abusive. Perhaps the director figure is as close as Midi Z gets, in demanding whether male achievement is always predicated on female suffering, or the agent, in questioning whether his gentle coaxing and his disingenuous promise to “respect [Nina’s] decision” don’t also entail their degree of power trip.
Still, there’s admirable bravery to Midi Z’s willingness to subject a #MeToo movie to the Cannes Festival circuit so soon after the fact. Cannes has long been a stomping ground for notorious abusers in the industry, including Harvey Weinstein, and as a result, “Nina Wu” carries a particular charge for the venue of its premiere. There are more than a few knowingly satirical winks to the ridiculous rituals of fame: the photo shoot during which Nina wears garish black lipstick, the interviews filled with inane questions from nosy journalists, the self-reflexive phone call informing Nina of the good news that “the film got selected for a big film festival.”
These are not unlike the photo shoots and press conferences that the film’s real actresses will do in the coming days, and if “Nina Wu” doesn’t provide a subtle reading of Hollywoodian abuse, it at least gestures at the inherent absurdity of rites of fame that a place like Cannes teaches us to worship. Clearly, the director takes great risks off-screen. If only they were as great on the screen. [B]