Keeping secrets in any culture
‘The Farewell’ director focuses on Chinese family, but finds that film’s theme is universal
There are several seats to choose from as Lulu Wang settles in on a recent Tuesday morning. “You could come closer,” she says. “It’s fine. I don’t bite.”
Wang is situated in one of the many chairs surrounding the large round table in a private room at Yank Sing, a dim sum restaurant in San Francisco. It’s the classic setup of Chinese establishments: a circular table with a lazy Susan on top.
The table and its lazy Susan are used effectively in Wang’s new film, “The Farewell,” which opens in the Bay Area on Friday, July 19. As a family gets together in Changchun, China, for the first time in years, the table provides a full view of everyone seated during meals, at times spurring discussion about, say, the thorny lines between identifying as Chinese or American or Chinese American after you have immigrated to the United States. The lazy Susan, though, is most prominently used in a scene later in the film, as the camera appears to sit on the rotating tabletop, jerking into closeups of each member at the table during a wedding. The family is merrily drunk, but the occasion itself is a sham.
After the matriarch of the family is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, everyone decides not to tell her, deciding it best that the family shoulder the burden instead. So that everyone can
visit for final goodbyes, a fake wedding is organized. But the granddaughter, Billi, played by Awkwafina in a breakout dramatic role, struggles with the secret.
The scenario is inspired by the situation that Wang went through with her own grandmother, a story she first adapted into an episode for “This American Life.” Soon after that podcast episode aired in 2016, plans for “The Farewell” came to fruition.
“There was definitely the pitch of Billi being the bride,” Wang recalls. Early on, she filtered out offers that proposed fundamental changes to the story. “People obviously were like, ‘Does it have to be set in China? Does the family have to be Chinese American? Do they have to speak Chinese? Could they maybe have learned English?’ ”
Those scenarios could be plausible, Wang thought, but what would it add? Or, more importantly, what would it take away?
“The Farewell” is most immediately striking for its quietly unadulterated cultural specificity. Most of the film takes place in China and is subtitled, and the central conflict plays out in Billi’s various struggles with her American and Chinese selves. Her Chinese is heavily accented, and her childhood memories of China are distorted by the intangible costs of her family’s move to America when she was a child. Most of all, Billi struggles with guilt, stemming from her Western worldview, as the elaborate lie plays out.
But in Wang’s telling, there is no right or wrong ideology — just the complicated limbo of a hyphenated life.
“In real life, there are no sides,” says Wang, who, like Billi, immigrated with her family to America when she was a child. “I love my family, and they have one perspective. I kind of have a different perspective, but I also kind of see their perspective.”
The precise textures of her experience were essential to the film. “I guess in the back of my head, I probably assumed that people would resonate because I’ve grown up watching films and television with families who don’t look like mine, but I still relate,” Wang says.
She was right; audiences of all backgrounds that have seen the film have consistently told her of how strongly they relate, even recounting similar situations in their own families. It has already been well received in Los Angeles when it opened last week, after screening to acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival.
Wang’s steadfast vision, though, came with time. “The Farewell” follows her littleseen romantic comedy debut, “Posthumous,” and years of toiling in the industry.
“Earlier in my career, I would have (compromised) because I was so desperate to just make something,” she says, referring to early offers that proposed a much broader telling of the film. “When you have a scarcity of opportunities, you’re more likely to say yes to anything that’s available. And I think I got to a point where I wasn’t going to do that anymore.”
Her film, she hopes, might mean future filmmakers can avoid the limitations she faced.
“My manager sent me another Chinese American film that got greenlit by a studio, and I do feel like, to some degree, this film has contributed to more stories getting greenlit, more stories that may potentially be partially subtitled,” she says. “To that effect, the film has already done what it should do in the culture.”
Nearly a year after the release of “Crazy Rich Asians,” a historic film for Asian representation, Wang’s film seems to build on that promise, while also providing an answer to critics who had yearned for a more nuanced portrait of Asian identity.
But Wang is cautious about her feelings toward the future of diverse storytelling in Hollywood, despite feeling optimistic about what she sees as a distinct shift in the industry.
“My cynicism comes in when I worry that it’s a trend for Hollywood,” Wang says. “They’ll move towards anything that’s hot for the time being, and then move off of it the minute that they perceive it not to be the trend anymore. I don’t want to see diversity as a trend. I don’t want to see representation as a trend.”
The buzz surrounding “The Farewell” can serve as a proof of concept for the industry. Wang knows the film will be a meaningful and emotional experience for Chinese Americans viewers. But it can also be the same for everyone else.
“I hope that the rest of the world is able to see universality through our stories,” she says. “I hope that a white guy in Middle America will watch it and see his own relationship with his own grandmother in Billi’s relationship with her grandma.”
“When you have a scarcity of opportunities, you’re more likely to say yes to anything that’s available. And I think I got to a point where I wasn’t going to do that anymore.” Filmmaker Lulu Wang