Being able to appreciate different cultures and the unique stories they can provide is one of the greatest aspects of film, as it can make the indigestible digestible to a larger audience and open their eyes to viewpoints and ideologies they’d never considered before. With more and more countries being able to voice their own perspectives with the passage of time, certain barriers that were once seen as dividing can now be viewed and appreciated by all, and a large audience can result in a large spread of conflicting opinions which can lead to interesting discussions. The 2019 film, The Farewell, ties this very idea into its premise in a very intentional way and proved successful enough to say that it was a well paid off gamble.

Aspiring Chinese American writer, Billie (played by Awkwafina) finds her unsatisfactory life in America isn’t leading her in the best direction but is held together by her close connection with her grandmother, Nai Nai (played by Zhao Shu-zhen) who still lives in China, but manages to keep in touch with despite of things. She’s hit with terrible news however, when she abruptly hears from her parents, Haiyan and Lu (played by Tzi Ma and Diana Lin) that her Nai Nai has terminal lung cancer and is only expected to live another few months. To make things even more shocking, Billie realizes that her family plans to not tell her of her sickness and have created a fake wedding for Billie’s cousin as an excuse for the whole family to get together again to subtly say their goodbyes. Although she’s told not to come as she would be too emotional and give away the truth, Billie decides to go to China in order to get one last chance with her grandmother, and upon doing so, learns how her entire family is adamant that she remains in the dark. As this fake wedding progresses, Billie continues to feel isolated and emotionally distant from everyone around her, all the while dreading the fact that she is hiding this information from her beloved Nai Nai and has to grapple with the thought that this could be their last encounter, and she would be none the wiser.

Created by newcomer director Lulu Wang and distributed by A24, The Farewell may’ve been a niche film that didn’t attract a huge audience but was very well received by those who did see it, made a profit on its miniscule budget of only $3 million, and even managed to get a few Golden Globes (with Awkwafina even taking home Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy). While a very minute film that doesn’t stretch itself far enough to be as far-reaching as other movies of its type, it still gets its point across and result in a perfectly acceptable picture.

The premise was derived from director Lulu Wang’s own grandmother’s illness, and the film’s conception and creation resulted in a very unique situation where the grandmother in question became part of the behind-the-scenes production and eventually caught on to her predicament by picking up contexts clues (acting as a weird mirror to the film itself ironically). While the idea of hiding something as serious as a terminal illness from the victim definitely feels immoral and wrong, this moral quandary is the very thing this movie bases itself around and doesn’t just gloss over the greyness of the action. The Farewell is essential a story about clashing cultures and the separation one can feel when they are bilingual or biracial. This isolation that can be felt when you’re an immigrant who has grown accustomed to an entirely different ideology and way of living, and how that affects your relationship with your home country and the people still living there (including your own family) is an interesting real world conflict many have no doubt experienced, and for the most part, the film handles this topic delicately and with respect.

For only her second feature-length film, Lulu Wang does a solid job writing and directing this pretty complicated idea in a feasibly mainstream fashion, handling her actors very nicely even as they switch between speaking English and Mandarin, providing a presentation that can be clean and stylistic but also grounded and mature, balancing a tone has inklings of a comedic undertone but a touch of blind sadness to it as well, and thanks to the short running time, quick-to-grasp characters and a well laid out scenario, it makes for an easy sit that still provides something fresh and different. There are issues to be addressed, like how it feels slightly hinder by being feature-length, with many moments being spent in long conversations, drawn out contemplative shots of people walking towards the camera, and very direct commentary that is spoken without much subtly, which while well done, does lead to a bit of a repetitive formula that doesn’t offer a lot of wiggle room for cinematic allusions or further interpretation. The movie could’ve either expanded on certain scenes, characters, and ideas in order to feel more fleshed out, or be shrunken into a short film or a play to mitigate this problem, as it feels like a lot of this set up would work better in a more condensed, simplified format.

With the family acting as the only major characters of focus and even most of them only acting as secondary perspectives on the overall message of the premise, they manage to succeed with the task they set out with even if all of them don’t entirely work.  The idea that this family is putting on a happy face and feigning a wedding just as an excuse to see an elderly matriarch who isn’t aware that she’s dying, could very easily be seen as insensitive and cruel, but the film takes another look at it and tries to make sense of such a perplexing stance. Most of the family members are sadly not that interesting, which rings true even for ones that are given more screentime like Billie’s parents and Nai Nai’s sister (played by Lu Hong), but it helps that the acting is able to keep everything stable and you do buy every scene given even when the subject is hard to stomach. Even though some exist only to serve a point, some of these discussions are interesting, like how the two sons reacting to their mother’s plight in differing ways based on their living situation (both are immigrants, but one went to America and the other went to Japan), or the wives differing thoughts on China and the competitive spirit that spurns from whether it or America is better, it’s all good stuff.

The real stars are definitely Awkwafina as Billie and Zhao Shu-zhen as Nai Nai, as both have great chemistry and build a very caring and believable granddaughter/grandmother dynamic, which only adds to the tragedy of the inevitable conclusion. Billie as a character feels a little underbaked, and more time exploring her life in America would’ve been beneficial to heightening the confusion and aimlessness she’s feeling during the film’s events, but her reactions and blatant dislike of this plan feel completely understandable, and Awkwafina, despite being known as a zany comedic actress, proves that she can do the dramatic stuff surprisingly well. Zhao Shu-zhen is also wonderfully warm and comforting, but also blunt and sometimes brutal as the grandmother, creating a character who carries that nice range of elderly spunk and bite, but also genuine care and understanding, which in turn makes her very endearing, any scene shared between these two are the best parts of the film.

This is a movie that feels like it had a limited budget not just because of what it shows off, but how it goes about presenting itself. This isn’t a problem as nothing about the film requires much money, and for only $3 million to work with, it is very nice looking with cinematography by Anna Franquesa-Solano that gets some nice shots of the cityscape, and even some odd visual choices that bring a bizarre factor to the film (these montage-like shots of people walking into the camera are strange and definitely unneeded, but still look nice). The production design by Yong Ok Lee is strangely muted in color, cloudy and hazy in its aesthetic, and even a little messy in decoration, but the camera work, framing and staging from the actors makes everything look picturesque and perfectly fitting almost to a disturbing degree, like on the surface, things are in place, but underneath nothing truly is (whether or not that was intentional is up for debate).

While the film is technically categorized as a comedic film with dramatic elements, the film really isn’t that funny. There are a few oddities that can be a little comical with the right mindset, but a majority of the humor doesn’t try to stand out and instead comes from typical family banter and not much from the writing and/or the situations. This is important to bring up because it feels like it could’ve really benefited from being a bit funnier. The story is definitely tragic and shouldn’t be taken lightly, but other stories with a darkly comedic edge can still carry an element of tragedy and heart if handled correctly (sometimes it can make the drama even more effective) and this scenario has enough going for it that it could’ve thrown in some ironic and even slightly messed-up elements to add that nice spice of awkward laughter, which could’ve made the dramatic stuff hit all the more harder, but this could be a personal taste situation so it’s difficult to pin down what the best course of action is. The music by Alex Weston has an air of classical prettiness to it but also a slight surreal chaotic factor as well, offering something that has a pleasant energy to it even if it can also be a little off-putting.

The Farewell feels like a good stepping off point for new talent, as well as a nice experiment to see how easily mainstream audiences adjust to something a little more atypical. There’s plenty of foreign material that mainstream audiences can get into, but they can still adopt traditional genres and viewpoints that many can identify with (it’s not like they need to be different in order to serve a point), whereas this one is actively choosing to tackle a subject matter that a majority of people probably aren’t going to agree with (at least with the action itself). Even if you disagree with what it’s saying, it is still worth checking out to develop your own opinions on it, and to maybe give other stories and cultures the same level of chance. Even with that in mind, the film is still well composed, directed, and acted, so you’ll still be given a solid film to watch regardless of how you view this idea.

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