Harassment in Taiwan’s Hollywood
Lesbian actress at center of a #MeToo fantastical thriller
BY STEVE ERICKSON
Urban legends claim that
the dark web is fi lled with
“red rooms” where voyeurs
pay to have women
slowly tortured and killed according
to their instructions. The precisely
color-coordinated “Nina Wu”
is full of literal red rooms. It also
portrays the Taiwanese fi lm industry
as a cesspool of sexual abuse,
where auditioning actresses are
asked to fi ght each other as an aloof
male director watches. Described
as a “post-#MeToo thriller,” “Nina
Wu” actually falls into a long line
of fi lms about the perils of being an
actress in a competitive world.
When “Nina Wu” begins, its title
character (Wu Ke-xi) is eking out
a living as an actress in bit parts
and reaching an audience directly
on social media. She gets her big
break in a period piece set in the
‘60s. As she gets told repeatedly,
the part requires sex and nudity.
The shoot is unpleasant, but once
it’s over Nina seems to fi nally be
on the path to stardom. When she
heads back to her hometown in
central Taiwan because her mother
has suffered a heart attack, she
reconnects with her former lover
Kiki (Sung Yu-hua), but all the
while Nina suffers visions of being
stalked by a mysterious woman.
Some of this fi lm’s detractors
have criticized it because it’s a
movie preoccupied with women’s
sexual abuse directed by a man,
but the project originated with Wu
Ke-xi. She wrote the script in 2018
(although the fi lm gives co-writing
credit to Midi Z). Her initial inspiration
came from a combination of
scandals about the sexual degradation
➤ TRANS FILM, from p.XX
male artists. The fi lm opens with a
segment on the late Barbara Hammer,
who talks about her life, her
archive, and her legacy as a visual
artist. Rasheedah Phillips and Camae
Ayewa (aka Moor Mother) run
a Black Quantum Futurism collective
in North Philadelphia and pair
Wu Ke-xi and Hsia Yu-chiao in Midi Z’s “Nina Wu,” which opens March 20 at the Metrograph.
of Korean and Taiwanese
actresses and writers and her own
experience. She was humiliated on
the set of her fi rst major commercial,
which led to lingering nightmares
and a desire to quit acting.
She did so briefl y, only returning
when she met Midi Z and started
performing in a much different
kind of role. It’s certainly no accident
that the actress and character
share the same surname. Wu’s
performance shows her character
making herself small over and over
again, as she’s placed in appalling
situations both on- and off-screen.
“Nina Wu” repeatedly suggests
that Midi Z acknowledges his
own complicity in the system he’s
describing. (It’s telling that none
of the fi lm’s male directors has a
name, and that Midi Z’s own end
credit comes immediately after
soundscapes with spoken word to
explore science fi ction and queer
voices. They talk about their lives,
theories, and experiences in compelling
interviews. “Queer Genius”
next showcases Jibz Cameron aka
Dynasty Handbag, who is seen in
her closets talking about her favorite
outfi ts, as well as performing
on stage. Rounding out the documentary
FILM MOVEMENT
Shih Ming-shuai’s for playing “Director”).
The fi lm returns again
and again to the device of placing
Nina in danger, then revealing that
we were watching images of her being
fi lmed or a fi nished fi lm itself.
In one such scene, she walks into
the middle of the street. After the
director yells, “Cut,” she almost
gets run over by a passing car. But
given that allof this is fi ctional and
being created for a spectator, what
does it mean to create so many
fi lm-within-the-fi lm moments?
I was enormously impressed by
Midi Z’s 2016 “The Road To Mandalay,”
which combined politicized
neo-realism with a more meditative
sensibility. A Burmese immigrant
who arrived in Taiwan at 16, the
director has made fi ve narrative
fi lms and three documentaries,
the last being the disappointingly
is a portrait of famed lesbian
poet Eileen Myles. She is seen
reading her work and discussing
her life, her sobriety, and her political
attitudes. This documentary is
an inspiring portrait of provocative
and legendary artist-activists.
The fi nal entry in the series is
Philip Brooks and Laurent Bocahut’s
1998 documentary, “Woubi
CINEMA
slight and superfi cial “14 Apples.”
His work’s customary grounding in
reality gets strained in “Nina Wu.”
Wu’s screenwriting may draw from
her own experiences, but the director’s
style takes it into fantasyland.
The lighting is alternately chilly
and overheated, while the camerawork
luxuriates in slow pans and
zooms. Very early on, some images,
such as a lizard burning up
inside a lamp, are probably Nina’s
fantasies, but it’s impossible to tell
for sure.
“Nina Wu” creates a world of private
symbolism, where characters
refer to experiences they couldn’t
have witnessed. Midi Z was likely
inspired by David Lynch’s “Mulholland
Drive,” but the effect is closer
to Nicolas Winding Refn’s much
crasser “The Neon Demon.” “Nina
Wu” tells the story of a lesbian who
has to pander to the male gaze to
make a living. Its fi nal half gets
more and more dreamlike, while
also getting nastier.
The fractured narrative here
strays out of Midi Z’s comfort zone,
and he’s not particularly adept at a
less linear style of storytelling. The
fi lm is torn between being an exposé
of sexual abuse and a weird,
arty genre fi lm. It’s possible to do
both equally well — look at Daniel
Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei’s “Cam,”
with which this fi lm has many similarities.
But “Nina Wu” ultimately
plays as though the exposé is an
excuse for another genre entry.
NINA WU | Directed by Midi Z |
Film Movement | In Mandarin with
English subtitles | Opens Mar. 20
| Metrograph, 7 Ludlow St., btwn.
Hester & Canal Sts.;metrograph.
com
Chéri” (March 15 at 7:30 p.m.;
March 17 at 9:15 p.m.), about the
gay and transgender community
in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
THE CINEMA OF GENDER TRANSGRESSIONS:
TRANS FILM | Anthology
Film Archives, 32 Second
Ave. at Second St. | Through Mar.
17 | anthologyfi lmarchives.org
GayCityNews.com | March 12 - March 25, 2020 27
/lmarchives.org
/GayCityNews.com
