The Long Goodbye
Poignant family drama finds emotional honesty in an actual lie…
When Lulu Wang’s grandmother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, her family didn’t tell their ‘nai nai’. Instead, as is customary in China, everyone from the doctors to the deeply conflicted Wang kept the devastating truth from her, staging a fake family wedding to secretly say goodbye, so that nai nai could live out her final days in blissful ignorance.
“People loved it as a concept [for a film],” says Wang, writer and director of The Farewell. “But in a farcical way.” US studios saw it as a screwball comedy, like Wang’s 2014 debut Posthumous. Chinese investors proposed a cultureclash comedy where protagonist Billi brings home an American boyfriend. But Wang was specific. “I wanted an American indie film, but set in China, with an Asian cast and authentic language,” she asserts. “It’s difficult for that combination to get financing.”
It proved impossible, in fact, until Wang caught the attention of producer Chris Weitz, who helped her realise her precise vision. “I knew the characters so well,” says Wang, who based the film’s extended family on her own. “I didn’t have to make them up.
I didn’t have to give them any quirks. I had so much to draw from real life.”
Shot in Changchun, where Wang’s family resides, and with Awkwafina’s Billi an avatar for the director, making the film helped Wang process some of her own feelings. “It’s not about deciding right or wrong,” Wang claims. “It’s about learning to respect our differences. Which is really important. We live in such a polarised world.”
When The Farewell released in the US it pulled in the highest per-cinema average of the year, besting Avengers: Endgame. And Wang already has her next project lined up: sci-fi Children Of The New World. “It’s similar,” teases Wang. “But digs deeper into characters, and specific relationship dynamics. I want to make sure I’m still exploring things that are important to me.”
ETA | 20 SEPTEMBER / THE FAREWELL OPENS NEXT MONTH.