Goodbye girl
Awkwafina a standout in poignant, funny ‘Farewell’
Adramatic breakout for lead Awkwafina, Lulu Wang’s comedydrama “The Farewell” begins with a caption reading, “Based on an actual lie,” and with the film’s heroine Billi (Awkwafina) waiting to hear if she has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which she needs desperately.
In New York City, Billi finds out from her distressed father (Tzi Ma) that her beloved grandmother Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), who lives back in Changchun, China, where she and her parents are from, has
been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The family has decided, as is tradition, not to tell Nai Nai of the diagnosis. But Billi’s parents choose to return to China to spend time with her and the rest of the family during her final weeks. They do not want Billi to come because they know she is hard up.
But Billi comes anyway, eager to be reunited with the family she has not seen since childhood. In China, the family has arranged a fake marriage for a grandson as an excuse to get all the family members together for their collective farewell to Nai Nai.
Like Ang Lee’s Taiwanset “Eat Drink Man Woman,” “The Farewell” revolves around family dinners during which a clearly defensive Billi, an aspiring artist, is asked about her romantic status by more traditional relatives and her plans for a family of her own. For her part, Nai Nai wonders why some people seem so sad when the family is all together and they should be happy.
Shredding expectations, “The Farewell” does not
drop a love interest in Billi’s lap in spite of Nai Nai’s efforts. Billi is not interested at this point, which was an interesting feminist stance for the film to take. In the dramatic high point of “The Farewell,” Billi tries to explain the fear and heartbreak she experienced at age 3 as a nonEnglish-speaking child when she, her mother (Diana Lin) and father moved alone to America, abandoning her extended family and leaving her completely isolated in their new, utterly foreign home. As an antidote to the sadness, we get amusing scenes of Billi practicing tai chi with her seemingly robust grandmother.
As a fable about the pain and loss immigrant children feel when starting life in a new country, “The Farewell” will resonate with many Americans. Writer-director Wang was born in Beijing and was 6 years old when she and her parents relocated to Miami. Wang trained in classical piano and graduated from Boston College in 2005 with a degree in literature and music. She has only one previous feature film, “Posthumous,” which I have not seen.
Moving and heartfelt, “The Farewell” should land on several ten-best lists and place Awkwafina, a comic standout in last year’s sensation “Crazy Rich Asians,” in the middle of the yearend awards races.
Twenty-six years after the release of Wayne Wang”s ”The Joy Luck Club” and 37 since his landmark effort “Chan Is Missing,” “The Farewell” is also a reminder that, even in art houses, films made by and about Asian Americans remain scarce.
(“The Farewell” contains mature themes.)