New 6-part French series from CANAL +, filmed in Thailand, Singapore, Spain, and France. It’s a murder mystery within a privileged community. Sort of a Not-as-white Lotus.
Adapting her own novel , L’Expatriée (2013), author Elisa Marpeau (1975, France) brings to life a story about the French expatriate community in Singapore, a community she knows firsthand after living intermittently in the Asian country for ten years. Starring Justine Lacanal (Naïlia Harzoune), who has just arrived in Singapore with her husband Simon and daughter Anaïs, in an attempt to reinvent herself in a city where towering skyscrapers stand in stark contrast to mangrove swamps. During her stay, she discovers the complex relationships that develop in the condominiums inhabited by French expatriates like Élisa Delestree (Ariane Labed), a woman who maintains a certain spirit of freedom alongside her husband Bertrand, but also in other, more dysfunctional families like that of Clémence Salinas (India Hair) and her husband Olivier, who are constantly at odds with their rebellious teenage son Mathieu. The condominiums where the foreigners live are privileged spaces, but also isolated from Singaporean society, with which they only have contact through their domestic workers, most of whom are also foreigners, immigrants from the Philippines who likewise maintain distant relationships with their employers. Some, like Ate-Mary (Yohana Yara), remain in the background, but with their ears wide open, while others, like Destiny (Dany Verissimo Petit), the Delestree family’s maid, try to find a financial solution through extortion. Singapura focuses on this closed and isolated community, which feels oppressive, marked by rumors and secrets that are constantly circulating among women who end up experiencing the roles of mothers and wives with few activities, their work in the hands of their husbands who have been transferred to the city by their companies, and the domestic chores performed by the Filipino maids. The portrayal of female characters like Justine, Élisa, and Clémence creates an ensemble story in which relationships intertwine and personal dramas unfold.
As is typical in these kinds of stories, the element that disrupts these lives is the introduction of a thriller through a murder that shocks the entire expat community, while simultaneously making them suspects due to the isolated nature of the condominiums. Justine, who knows the victim, becomes involved in the investigation, driven by her work as a journalist, which turns the crime into an almost vital obsession for her. Meanwhile, the introduction of Detective Adam Wong (Soji Arai) establishes a subplot of police investigation and interrogations that becomes the overarching element affecting all the families in the community.
The images come from a mediocre Russian dub, as churned out by one of those gambling sites.
Ariane Labed
Also kinda-sorta naked: Nailia_Harzoune
Casual nudity. The thing which is mostly non existent in American mainstream cinema.
Is there an American mainstream example for this? E.g. waking up, getting out of bed naked, doing various things naked , where the nudity has no special meaning she just happens to be naked.