The Farewell Review
PG: for thematic material, brief language and some smoking.
Studios: A24, Big Beach, Kindred Spirit, Ray Productions
Run Time: 1 Hr and 38 Minutes
Writer/Director: Lulu Wang
Cast: Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Zhao Shuzhen, Lu Hong, Jiang Yongbo
After learning their beloved matriarch has terminal lung cancer, a family opts not to tell her about the diagnosis, instead scheduling an impromptu wedding-reunion back in China. Headstrong and emotional writer Billi rebels against her parents’ directive to stay in New York and joins the family as they awkwardly attempt to rekindle old bonds, throw together a wedding that only grandma is actually looking forward to, and surreptitiously say their goodbyes.
In 2018, Awkwafina leapt onto the big screen, starring in two of the summer’s most successful hits (Ocean’s 8 and Crazy Rich Asians) alongside incredible ensembles. The only thing is that she always played supporting roles as the comic relief. Though she did steal the show in Crazy Rich Asians, every second she was on screen (especially when she dropped her PG-13 f-bomb which had me in uproarious laughter) made me curious about how it would look if Awkwafina led her own feature. Lo and behold, she delivers a star-turning performance that exhibits the range she has as an actress. Awkwafina has already displayed enough talent as a skilled rapper and actress with a vibrant personality, but the character she portrays (Billi) is not as upbeat as Awkwafina’s previous roles for she is more brittle and relatable. The entire story is presented through her point of view as she plays as the audiences’ avatar, for she questions most of the choices her family makes that she doesn’t realize are traditions, even when she discovers the lengths they are willing to go to.
The narrative is based on a personal experience that writer/director Lulu Wang went through with her family. The powerful dialogue and performances show how personal this story really is. A brilliant aspect that gives the movie a resonant authenticity is the family dynamic. If you are a person from a cultural background, you will be able to easily identify elements that remind you of your own family. Unlike many family dramas where characters tend to have a one-track personality, Wang writes the relatives that she stripped from her life and made them entirely relatable, even down to the controlling matriarch who is overbearing but means well. We all have a Nai Nai in our lives. My Haitian grandmother is my Nai Nai and the characteristics she bares are some that I related to on a personal level. They’re bold, have no filter, and love to boss people around to feel important which is a line that chillingly resonated with me. There are so many parts of the film where I thought:
The relationship Billi shares with her Nai Nai is special and is alternatively reminiscent of this Jenny Zhang article I was assigned to read in my Cultures and Transformation Anthropology class in my most recent semester entitled, Why Were They Throwing Bricks? I say “alternatively” because, in Zhang’s short story which also focused on the relationship she had with her grandmother, Zhang discusses how she rebuked her traditionalist Chinese grandmother and one of the primary factors was her assimilation to America. With this film, on the other hand, Wang displays the loving closeness between her already assimilated lead, Billi, and her traditionalist grandmother. While Billi is lost of her native heritage, she questions instead of rebukes, which I appreciate. Wang handles the adult themes of death and tradition and presents them in a thought provoking way that many different cultures aren’t aware of. I even love how Billi’s confliction between her emotion and family’s tradition comes to play because of her Americanization. Because of her being an assimilated citizen, she finds difficulty in concealing her emotions like the rest of the family is absent. Similar to other powerful films focused on unrepresented heritages such as Crazy Rich Asians and Coco, Wang brings that theme of family traditions to the forefront that many people of the world aren’t familiar with.
Another layer of authenticity that I admire is language which plays as its own character in the film. A vast majority of the dialogue is in Chinese. English is spoken during moments when Billi knows it’s safe to speak in a language she knows some of her family (primarily her Nai Nai) can’t understand. Seeing how Awkwafina is in fact bilingual and able to switch between two languages on a whim adds another layer of incredible to her. Seriously:
Besides Awkwafina’s performance, I was really feeling Shuzhen Zhou’s work, for she captures every aspect of a matriarch. She commands nearly every scene and provides the most humorous lines that are garnered to get big laughs. The story is centered around Nai Nai and her character proves why she’s so significant to this family.
Before you see the film, I highly recommend to listen to the “This American Life” podcast episode titled, “What You Don’t Know” where Lulu Wang narrates the personal experience she went through, which was the basis and inspiration for the film that she passionately made. How she recollects the events and tells an enticingly profound personal story with courage in the podcast correlates with how she tells it as a filmmaker. The way that Wang is able to avoid familiar tropes presented in other family dramas and balance comedy and tragedy (in some scenes, simultaneously) without the story getting too saccharine is a great achievement. She takes a mature approach that never gets too dramatic or manipulative, so when the emotional beats hit from the metaphorical visuals or the dialogue, it feels natural which a lot of films as of recent are unable to capture and I commend Wang for pulling it off.
Lulu Wang’s The Farewell is an incredible mature outlook on family tradition that is thought-provoking, relative, and most of all personal, which are the best attributes that makes a filmmaker an amazing storyteller while providing a star-turning performance by Awkwafina.
Rating: 4.5/5 | 93%
