Direction: Midi Z
Country: Taiwan
This finely crafted, ever restless psychodrama film co-written by Midi Z (The Road to Mandalay, 2016) and Wu Ke-xi, who also stars, provides an absorbing cinematic experience that gets creepier and infuriating as the details of the story emerge.
Sufen Wu (Ke-xi) left her rural hometown eight years ago to try her luck as an actress in Taipei, where she adopted the artistic name Nina Wu. She was only picked to play background roles in a few short films and minor commercials, and has been making most of her living as an online celebrity. Now, that an opportunity to have the leading role in a major feature came up, Nina doesn’t want to screw up and goes for it, even if the nudity and sex scenes in it make her extremely uncomfortable. How much humiliation and submission is needed for an actress to be successful?
The film-inside-the-film concept works well, and we find her being provoked and bullied by the strict director (Shih Ming-shuai). We also learn through episodic scenes that Nina misses her childhood friend Kiki (Vivian Sung) most than anyone, and that she deals with different problems in her family. Her recurrent strange dreams show her state of mind, which is deeply affected trauma.
The film is cleverly structured and the title character shaped with feverish, Darren Aronofsky-like layers, which adds well to the suspenseful coldness of Michael Haneke and the voluptuousness and paranoia associated with Gaspar Noé. It can be manipulative and disorienting at times, and not all scenes work at the same level. Still, it’s a chilling statement involving the movie industry that will leave you disturbed and disgusted.
