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The Farewell (2019 film)

The Farewell (Chinese: 别告诉她; pinyin: Bié Gàosu Tā; lit. 'Don't Tell Her') is a 2019 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Lulu Wang. It stars Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, and Zhao Shuzhen. The film follows a Chinese American woman named Billi, who learns her grandmother, Nai Nai, has only a short while left to live. Billi's family has decided to schedule a family wedding before Nai Nai dies to enable her to see all the family one last time, and not tell Nai Nai of her fatal illness.

The film is based in part on director Wang's life experiences, which she first publicly discussed as part of her radio story What You Don't Know, which appeared as part of an episode of This American Life. The film was screened in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released in the United States on July 12, 2019, by A24. It received widespread acclaim from critics, with particular praise for Wang's screenplay and the performances of Awkwafina and Zhao Shuzhen. At the 77th Golden Globe Awards the film was nominated for two awards including Best Foreign Language Film, with Awkwafina winning for Best Actress – Musical or Comedy. The Farewell has dialogue in both English and Mandarin Chinese.

Plot

Aspiring Chinese-American writer Billi maintains a close relationship with Nai Nai (paternal grandmother) who lives in Changchun, China. After receiving a rejection letter for a Guggenheim Fellowship, she discovers from her parents, Haiyan and Jian, that Nai Nai has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and is predicted to have only a few months left to live.

Through deception and manipulation of medical test results, the diagnosis is kept a secret from Nai Nai herself. She is, instead, falsely told that her recent doctor visits have only revealed benign findings. A wedding for Billi's cousin from Japan, Hao Hao, has been planned in China as an excuse to unite the family to spend what is expected to be one last time with Nai Nai. Fearing Billi will end up exposing the lie to her grandmother, Haiyan and Jian tell her to remain in New York City.

Billi disobeys her parents' orders and flies to Changchun shortly after the rest of the family arrive. She assures her parents that she will not reveal the cancer diagnosis to Nai Nai. Throughout the trip, however, she clashes with the rest of the family over their deliberate dishonesty towards her grandmother. Guilt-ridden, Billi expresses conflicted thoughts with her parents over the Chinese cultural beliefs that result in a family refusing to disclose a life-threatening disease, including the trauma of her grandfather passing away after they moved to the United States.

One night, her uncle, Haibin, contends that the lie allows the family to bear the emotional burden of the diagnosis, rather than Nai Nai herself—a practice of collectivism that he acknowledges differs from the individualistic values common in Western culture. Billi later learns that Nai Nai also told a similar lie to her husband up until his death when he was terminally ill.

On the day of the wedding, both Haibin and Hao Hao break down in tears on separate occasions but manage to proceed through the banquet without raising Nai Nai's suspicions. Billi intercepts Nai Nai's medical test results from the hospital and has it altered to reflect a clean bill of health, helping to maintain the lie.

That night, Nai Nai gives Billi a hóngbāo, encouraging her to spend the money as she chooses. Billi admits that she wants to stay in Changchun to spend more time with Nai Nai, but Nai Nai declines, telling her that she needs to live her own life. When Billi reveals the Guggenheim Fellowship rejection to her, Nai Nai encourages Billi to keep an open mind and not get hung up on this failure, "don't be the bull endlessly ramming its horns into the corner of the room." She says that "life is not about what things one does, but more so about how one goes about doing them".

Billi keeps her promise to maintain the lie. She shares a tearful goodbye with Nai Nai as the visiting family members return to their homes in Japan and America. A title card reveals that six years after her diagnosis, the woman Nai Nai's character was based on is still alive and still unaware of her sickness.

Cast

Awkwafina as Billi Wang (Chinese: 王比莉)
Tzi Ma as Haiyan Wang (王海燕), Billi's father
Diana Lin as Lu Jian (陆建), Billi's mother
Zhao Shu-zhen as Nai Nai (奶奶), Billi's paternal grandmother
Lu Hong (playing herself) as Little Nai Nai, Billi's grandmother's younger sister
Jiang Yongbo as Haibin (海滨), Haiyan's older brother
Chen Han as Hao Hao (浩浩), Haibin's son
Aoi Mizuhara as Aiko (Japanese: 愛子), Hao Hao's Japanese fiancée
Zhang Jing as Yuping, Haiyan's cousin
Li Xiang as Aunty Ling, Haibin's wife
Yang Xuejian as Mr. Li
Jim Liu as Dr. Song

Production

Lulu Wang faced obstacles when pitching her film about a Chinese American family. She says she had many disheartening encounters with American and Chinese financiers who wanted to include a "prominent white character into the narrative, and punch up the nuanced drama to turn it into a broad comedy."

Wang later created an episode titled What You Don't Know for This American Life in April, 2016 based on her family's story. This caught the attention of producer Chris Weitz who helped secure financing for the film.

Wang said that the film was based on her grandmother's illness, stating that "I always felt the divide in my relationship to my family versus my relationship to my classmates and to my colleagues and to the world that I inhabit. That's just the nature of being an immigrant and straddling two cultures."

The film was primarily shot in Changchun, China, over the course of 24 days in June 2018. Filming also took place in New York. In an interview with Filmmaker, cinematographer Anna Franquesa Solano stated that the references for the film included Force Majeure and Still Walking. However, she added that her main source of inspiration came from "spending time with Lulu's family at their home in Changchun, during pre-production."

Director Lulu Wang says that she kept the secret from her grandmother during and after film production. It was awkward to keep the secret when the grandmother visited the filming, a block from her home. Wang claims her grandmother eventually found out when a friend sent her a review of the film.

Release

The film had its premiere in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2019. In January 2019, A24 acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film for $7 million, over Netflix, Amazon Studios, and Fox Searchlight Pictures. It was released in the United States on July 12, 2019. A fully Chinese-subtitled version of the film played in select theaters on September 8, 2019.

Reception

Box office

The Farewell grossed $17.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $5.4 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $23.1 million, against a production budget of $3 million.

In its opening weekend the film made $355,662 from four theaters for an average of $88,916 per venue; at the time, it was the best average of 2019, besting Avengers: Endgame's $76,601. It expanded to 35 theaters in its second weekend and earned $1.14 million, then made $1.5 million from 135 theaters in its third. It continued to expand in the following weeks, making $2.4 million from 426 theaters and then $2.2 million from 705 theaters. The film expanded further to over 800 theaters in the next few weeks, $1.4 million from 861 theaters, $882,623 from 816 theaters and $841,414 from 891 theaters.

The Farewell was a box office "flop" in China, grossing only $580,000 by January 2020 in what was then the world's second-largest film market. According to Sixth Tone, the film's delayed theatrical release—to prevent it from being lost in the hype surrounding Disney’s Frozen 2—was a big factor in the low gross since many in China had already seen it abroad or online.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97%, with an average rating of 8.5/10, based on 345 reviews. The website's critics' consensus reads: "The Farewell deftly captures complicated family dynamics with a poignant, well-acted drama that marries cultural specificity with universally relatable themes." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 89 out of 100 based on 47 critic reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

Eric Kohn of IndieWire gave the film an A− grade and praised Awkwafina's performance, writing, "As a Chinese-American grappling with the traditionalism of her past and its impact on the future, she's an absorbing engine for the movie's introspective look at a most unusual family reunion." Christy Lemire writing for RogerEbert.com gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, saying Zhao Shuzhen is "the most frequent source of laughs", but went on to say that "as delightful as [Zhao] is in this crucial, central role, she will also quietly rip your heart out by the film's end". Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair wrote, "Wang movingly tells not just a story about the negotiations of familial love, but also of the immigrant experience, of revisiting one's homeland to, in some senses, say goodbye to it." David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter commented, "its moments of sweet sentimentality are fully earned and heartfelt." Brian Lowry of CNN.com described it as a "small, melancholy movie that explores cultural differences and dealing with death in an utterly charming, understated manner." Hong Kong playwright Jingan Young commented on the film's depiction of the differences between western and Chinese family values, claiming that "the family’s decision to tell a 'good lie' is a metaphor for the collective delusion of living under the Chinese Communist party."

Former United States President Barack Obama named The Farewell amongst his favorite films and television series of 2019 in an annual list released on December 29, 2019.