I was lucky enough to attend the Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) this year, and went to the “Breakthrough Artists” Winnick Talk on Saturday, October 12th. This is an event where they bring three up-and-coming people (usually actors) in the industry; past attendees include Emily Blunt, Brie Larson, Adam Driver, Jessica Chastain, Mahershala Ali, Emma Stone, Lupita Nyong’o, Riz Ahmed, Alicia Vikander, Elisabeth Moss, Rooney Mara, and Oscar Isaac. This year they honored Camila Morrone, Aldis Hodge and Lulu Wang. Morrone and Hodge are actors while Wang is a director. However, after seeing The Farewell, Wang’s second feature film, I find it hard to call her merely up-and-coming.
The Farewell is a truly remarkable movie about a family who learns that their matriarch Nai Nai has cancer; they decide not to tell her but arrange a marriage to have an excuse for the whole family to gather and celebrate with each other. The film originally premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2019 and was released in theaters in early July by A24. The movie hasn’t gotten that much press; it’s a small indie, made by a young director, with an entirely Asian cast. It was made for $3 million and made approximately $18.6 million at the box office which is pretty incredible for such a small movie. I’d attribute that to the universality of the characters even within a non-Western story. The movie takes place mostly in China and is in Chinese with English subtitles.
The Farewell is based on Wang’s life – the character she is represented by is named Billie and played by Awkwafina; Billie also serves as a Western audience’s avatar. We’re first introduced to her walking through New York City, talking to her grandmother Nai Nai on the phone. It was a typical granddaughter/grandmother exchange – Nai Nai tells Billie to be careful because she heard on the news that people in NYC will steal your earrings by ripping them out of your ears so that you have to go to the hospital. The theater laughed together as we were all immediately drawn in by their adorable and extremely relatable relationship. You could immediately feel the love, respect and familiarity of the two characters. Billie then goes to her parents house and we understand their dynamic quickly as well. It’s one of love and support but with high expectations, or more aptly, low expectations. Billie is somewhat of the mess-up in the family – she’s decided to follow what she’s passionate about and it hasn’t quite worked out for her yet. Her parents constantly ask if she needs money – in theory supportive and great but laced with hints of disappointment in it. Eventually we learn that Nai Nai has cancer and is very sick. Chinese tradition believes that the sickness isn’t what kills you, the fear of the sickness is – it’s for that reason that they believe it’s better to lie to the sick person about their condition and pretend as if everything is okay until the end of their lives. It is on the family to bear that emotional burden for the sick person. It’s a sign of deep love to try to take that pain away from the person for as long as possible. Billie and her parents had moved to the United States when Billie was six – she was raised with American ideals and thereby struggled with the reality of not telling Nai Nai. In fact, her whole family wanted her to stay in America because they didn’t believe she could keep the secret from Nai Nai.
My favorite part of the movie was a speech where Billie’s Uncle is telling her that she has to understand the fundamental difference between the East and the West. In the West, we’re taught that our bodies are our own. In the East, they’re taught that they are part of a whole: family, society, something greater. I learned so much from the speech and I really felt that was the moment the themes of the movie clicked best for me. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to ask Lulu about this speech at the HIFF Breakthrough Artist event.
I asked “As an American, I felt the frustrations Billie felt throughout the movie in lying to her grandmothers. It wasn’t until that moment between Billie and her Uncle that the greater understanding clicked for me. Can you talk about how you’ve struggled to choose between those two forces in your life and how you plan to tackle it moving forward after making this movie?” Lulu explained to me that these are the central questions she’s been asking herself her whole life. She held out making this movie until someone would let her tell her story the way she wanted to; Asian investors told her she was too American and American investors told her she was too Asian but she wanted to harness that space in between and not shy away from it. In fact, she said she could not have made the movie from any other perspective. She continued to explain that she has no intention of choosing between the Eastern and Western parts of herself; the goal of this story was just to enhance her own voice. She feels that the two pillars of her voice are “pathos” and “humor,” not just Eastern vs. Western. Lulu expertly carried out her vision as the movie was both extremely funny and heartfelt. I was not the only one in the theater crying when we see Billie driving away from Nai Nai believing it would be the last time she ever saw her again. When it cuts to black and then we see Nai Nai alive and well on screen I was so relieved and thankful that it actually surprised me how closely I had become attached to the characters in such a short time.
During the session, Lulu was asked how her grandmother was doing and if she had ever seen the movie. Lulu said that she had not seen the movie, because they are still keeping the secret from her so that would obviously ruin it. She joked that Nai Nai might secretly know if she’s figured out how to work Google and just hasn’t told anyone. Lulu did go into the continued hardship and push and pull of whether she feels this is the right thing. Lulu felt the best way to show that struggle and the responsibility was to cast her real-life Great Aunt in the movie as the Great Aunt.
In both real life and the movie, Nai Nai’s sister is the one who makes the decision in the hospital to keep the secret from Nai Nai. It’s a different time zone and she didn’t have time to consult anyone so in that moment she made the decision for the entire family; Lulu describes the weight of this decision with painful accuracy to the group. She explains that she did not believe anyone else could accurately portray the difficulty and subtlety of carrying the burden of lying to their family member the way her Great-Aunt would since she actually went through it. Her Great Aunt, having never acted before, described the experience as cathartic – as an opportunity to relive and further understand the decision she had made. It was heartening to hear Lulu describe it this way. It reminds me again of that moment of relief of seeing Nai Nai alive again – I suspect Lulu and her Great Aunt continuously feel that way when they look at their smiling, singing Nai Nai.
I cannot wait to see what Lulu Wang does next. I continue to look forward to understanding more of both myself and the world beyond my little bubble through the ingenious work of Lulu Wang.
