NZIFF Film Review: "The Farewell" (2019).

"Based on an Actual Lie." This is The Farewell. This comedy-drama film written and directed by Lulu Wang. Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi reluctantly returns to Changchun to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai, has been given mere weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai Nai herself. To assure her happiness, they gather under the joyful guise of an expedited wedding, uniting family members scattered among new homes abroad. As Billi navigates a minefield of family expectations and proprieties, she finds there’s a lot to celebrate: a chance to rediscover the country she left as a child, her grandmother’s wondrous spirit, and the ties that keep on binding even when so much goes unspoken.

The film was based on an story initially shared on This American Life. Wang said that the film was based on her grandmother's illness, stating that "I always felt the divide in my relationship to my family versus my relationship to my classmates and to my colleagues and to the world that I inhabit. That's just the nature of being an immigrant and straddling two cultures." In June 2018, principal photography commenced and wrapped after twenty-four days, with filming taking place in Changchun, China and New York. In an interview with Filmmaker, cinematographer Anna Franquesa Solano stated that the references for the film included Force Majeure (2014) and Still Walking (2008). However, she added that her main source of inspiration came from "spending time with Lulu's family at their home in Changchun, during pre-production."

The film stars Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Zhao Shuzhen, Lu Hong, Jiang Yongbo, Chen Han, and Aoi Mizuhara. The Acting is uniformly great, the players conveying as much of their struggles using body language as with words. But the most mind-blowing performance came from Awkwafina, who has come a long way since her days of making amateur music videos like My Vag.

With The Farewell, Wang has created a heartfelt celebration of both the way we perform family and the way we live it, masterfully interweaving a gently humorous depiction of the good lie in action with a richly moving story of how family can unite and strengthen us, often in spite of ourselves. Wang's darkly comedic family drama, set mainly in China, is a farewell to a family member without a farewell. The film is a gripping and deftly observed drama that adds caustic condemnation through its embracing of humour. Ultimately, the film becomes a thoughtful examination, through Billi, of the person who lives inside each of us, emerging only in the most unguarded moments - and not always a person we want to acknowledge. The film is incredibly thought-provoking and a frequently funny study of the Asian family dynamic. Wang's almost sage-like understanding of what makes modern families tick places her and this wonderful film in the league of Asian-American grand master, Ang Lee, and you can't ask for higher praise than that. Wang and her superb cast have made an odd, yet surprisingly relatable movie. Let it rock your world.

Simon says The Farewell receives:

Also, see my NZIFF review for Monos.