The bittersweet drama “The Farewell” begins with a title card
informing us that what we’re about to see is “based on a true lie.” Telling the
story of one family’s decision to keep their matriarch’s terminal cancer
diagnosis a secret from her, the film was inspired by writer-director Lulu
Wang’s actual family experience, a tale Wang first recounted for a 2016 episode
of “This American Life.”
Wang’s
stand-in for this lightly fictionalized recounting is Billi
(Awkwafina), a 30-something struggling writer living
in Manhattan. Billi’s parents Jian (Diana Lin) and Haiyan (Tzi
Ma) moved from China when she was a young girl, though she maintains a close
relationship with her beloved grandmother (Shuzhen
Zhou) — whom she calls Nai Nai
— back in China.
When Nai Nai is diagnosed with stage 4
lung cancer and given as little as three months to live, Billi
is conflicted about the family’s decision to keep Nai Nai in the dark about her prognosis. Rather than
break the news to her, the family decides to travel to her home in Changchun to
stage a fake wedding between Billi’s cousin (Chen
Han) and his new Japanese girlfriend (Aoi Mizuhara) as a pretext for the whole extended family to
gather and say their goodbyes to Nai Nai.
It seems
this is a not uncommon practice in China, a way of allowing the sick family
member to live out the remainder of their days in relative peace, while the
rest of the family bears the emotional burden. Being raised toward a
Westernized way of thinking, Billi struggles with her
family’s actions. The cross-cultural moral dilemma at the heart of the film is
rooted in her anxieties at being a first generation Chinese-American and the
uneasy the intersection between family, culture, and identity.
The
immigrant experience often means having an identity split between two distant
locations, ones that could equally be considered home. The film dramatizes Billi’s internal, East-West conflict as she feels the push
and pull of living between two cultures and juggling the occasionally
mismatched value systems of each.
Mostly known
for her comedic work thus far in her screen career, Awkwafina
is wonderful in her first true leading role, delivering a much more somber
performance than we’ve seen from her. As the family pushes Billi
to hide her grief and put on a happy face, we see how the decision weighs on
her. She’s told repeatedly that having grown up in America, she just doesn’t
understand.
The actress
finds a touching honesty and vulnerability in her character, even as Billi fights to keep her emotions bottled inside. She finds
ways to express Billi’s frustration and anger at the
situation, and the difficulty of saying goodbye to someone who doesn’t know that
it’s goodbye.
She also
witnesses some behind-the-scenes absurdity, like when the family convinces the
employees of the local copy store to alter Nai Nai’s test results to describe her tumors as “benign
shadows,” though no one is able to articulate what exactly that’s supposed to
mean.
Wang tells
her story in a way that’s warm, sad, and sweet, but never feels heavy or overly
sentimental. There’s plenty of uncomfortable interactions with extended family,
but Wang resists the urge to make the film a wacky family comedy, though there
are small moments of humor. Many come from Aoi Mizuhara as the poor bride, who doesn’t speak Chinese but
whose wide-eyed looks of discomfort provide no shortage of sympathetic laughs
as she’s asked to navigate this minefield while pretending she’s ready to leap
into a marriage with a man she’s only known for three months.
Wang has a
way with character, layering the film with small details that tell us so much,
even during moments when her characters struggle to say anything at all. The
filmmaker is never particularly interested in using her film to state
conclusively whether the family’s decision to keep NaiNai’s illness from her is right or wrong, but she
does seek to make it clear why they choose to do so.
Exploring
the complexities of cultural identity, “The Farewell” circulates with grief,
love, regret, and guilt. It tells a warm, heartfelt, and often funny story
about the bonds of family and the ways we work to stretch them as far as we
can; across continents if we have to. It’s also a lovely tribute to the wonder
that is grandmothers; if there’s one in your life, don’t be surprised if you
leave the theater wanting nothing more than to hug her at once.
This article appears in Jul 31 – Aug 6, 2019.
