A BITTERSWEET FAMILY STORY IN ‘THE FAREWELL’

The premise behind writer and director Lulu Wang’s wonderful film “The Farewell ” might be a little hard to accept for some audiences. A family collectively decides not to tell their grandmother that she

‘The Farewell’

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has been diagnosed with lung cancer and has only three months to live. But wanting a chance to say goodbye, they arrange an elaborate ruse — a wedding — to get everyone together one last time.

Far-fetched? For Americans it is. But as we learn in the first frame, the film is “Based on an actual lie.”

Yes, Wang has mined her own family’s wild true story to create a film that, despite its hyper-specific premise and setting, is a universally relatable and heart-rending portrait of how looming death affects a family. It’s not emotionally manipulative or even necessarily a tear-jerker, although it’s not a bad idea to bring along tissues. “The Farewell” is a stoic and honest representation of a flawed and lovely family coming to terms with the inevitable.

Awkwafina plays the stand-in for Wang. Her character, Billi, is a 31-year-old New Yorker whose financial and career instability is starting to become more than just a temporary state of youth. She’s having trouble paying the rent, her parents are reaching the point where they don’t really want to help anymore, and she’s just been rejected for a fellowship she was counting on. She’s rudderless and drifting.

Then her parents inform her that her beloved grandmother, Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao, who will win your heart in an instant), is dying

A24 VIA AP Awkwafina, center, in a scene from “The Farewell.” PG for thematic material, brief language and some smoking 98 minutes

CASI MOSS/A24 VIA AP Awkwafina in a scene from “The Farewell.”