The Farewell (2019)

Directed by: Lulu Wang | 100 minutes | comedy, drama | Actors: Shuzhen Zhao, Awkwafina, X Mayo, Hong Lu, Hong Lin, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Yang Xuejian, Becca Khalil, Yongbo Jiang, Han Chen, Aoi Mizuhara, Xiang Li, Hongli Liu, Shimin Zhang, Jing Zhang, Jinhang Liu

She is a figurehead of the Asian-American community: rap star and actress Nora Lum, better known by her stage name Awkwafina. Born in New York in 1988, Lum has a Chinese-American father and a South Korean mother who died when she was only four years old. Her father raised her together with his parents from then on. As a result, the bond that Awkwafina has with her grandparents, especially with her grandmother, is very strong. No wonder that the screenplay by filmmaker Lulu Wang – not to be confused with the Dutch writer of the same name – immediately appealed to her. Wang broke through in 2014 with the romantic comedy ‘Posthumous’ and was inspired for her second film by a white lie that was spread in her own family. When it became known that Wang’s grandmother was terminally ill and had only three months to live, it was decided not to tell her. The idea was that maybe she could prolong her life by not telling her the news, because then she wouldn’t have to worry about it. Curious as she is, Grandma wanted to know what kind of movie her granddaughter was working on. She met the cast, including the actress who plays her in the film (Zhao Shuzhen), and noticed that Lulu was making a film about her own family. “When she asked me about it, I just said it’s a film about an immigrant family going back to China for a wedding, which is actually not a lie, but a half-truth,” explains the filmmaker. The family assumed it wouldn’t be too hard to keep Grandma in the dark because she was likely to die before “The Farewell” (2019) premiered. Grandma, however, turned out to be a tough one and is still alive six years after her diagnosis.

Awkwafina takes on the role of Billi, who was born in Changchun, China, but moved to New York at the age of six with her parents (Tzi Ma and Diana Lin). Although her life takes place entirely in America, she still calls her grandmother in China very regularly. But then through her grandmother’s sister (Hong Lu, also Lulu Wang’s great-aunt in real life, so she plays herself) the news comes that grandmother, affectionately known as Nai Nai (“grandmother” in Mandarin), has been diagnosed with a terminal form of lung cancer and that she probably has only a few months to live. Plans are immediately made for an extensive visit, but Billi is not supposed to come along. She’s too American, too emotionally genuine, and probably incapable of playing the game the family has devised: they feign a cousin’s upcoming wedding in order to get them all together, without Nai Nai needing to know what the actual reason for their visit. Billi doesn’t care and decides to take the plane to Changchun anyway. Not only is she perplexed by the changes the city has undergone over the past 25 years, it makes her melancholy. As soon as she comes face to face with Grandma, we see her shooting at her but she can’t show it. Later she confronts her parents: how is it possible that they can hide their grief so well behind a lie? Her mother corrects her: just because she doesn’t cry doesn’t mean she isn’t sad.

Sure, we’ve seen culture clashes in movies before, but mostly they’re limited to stereotypes, misunderstandings, and superficiality. Especially in comedies it rarely digs deeper than that. With ‘The Farewell’ Lulu Wang shows that things can be done differently and more subtle, without losing sight of the humor. Billi would like to have the truth about her grandmother’s illness out in the open as soon as possible – with her Western glasses on, she stares blindly at the fact that it is even a crime in the US to deceive someone like that. Her Asian relatives, on the other hand, see her way of thinking as inherent in Western egocentrism and individualism. They see it as their duty to bear the burden of her illness for Grandma. Concepts such as grief and mourning are universal, but the way in which they are dealt with is culturally determined. This creates tensions and it takes a long time before they are pronounced. And when it finally comes out, the outburst is heartbreaking. Wang also looks beyond the cultural differences between China and the US: Billi’s uncle Haibin (Jiang Yongbo) comes over from Japan, where he has lived for decades. Although the countries are relatively close to each other geographically, Haibin also feels like an outsider in China. This can best be seen in his son Hao Hao (Chen Han), who is head over heels forced into a marriage with his Japanese girlfriend Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara), with whom he has only been together for a few months. The couple walk around as amazed as Billi and Aiko (who doesn’t speak Mandarin and communicates only with friendly smiles) seem to be running away crying at any moment because she has no idea what’s going on.

The cast is strong across the board. Awkwafina usually plays highly exaggerated figures (e.g. in ‘Ocean’s 8′ and ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ (both from 2018)), but here is very convincing in a sober role as a woman on the verge of her last – and perhaps only – connection to lose her past. A woman who balances between two cultures, perhaps leaning more to one side, but who nevertheless recognizes that the other side of her identity is an equally essential part of who she is. Humor and tragedy go hand in hand in ‘The Farewell’: Nai Nai insists on a big wedding and elaborate cooking for the family. She personifies both hilarity and tragedy in the same breath and is also the glue that keeps all those family members together with their divergent lives. The love they all feel for her is beyond all cultural differences. ‘The Farewell’ is a beautiful, deeply human film about the indestructible power of family ties that will leave few people untouched.