SUNDANCE 2019 REVIEW: Lulu Wang’s THE FAREWELL stars Awkwafina in a heartfelt and occasionally tear-stained comedy bridging the Chinese-American generational divide

“Based on an actual lie.” That’s what we are told at the beginning of Lulu Wang’s THE FAREWELL. Starring Awkwafina as a young Chinese American woman struggling to pay rent, and kick start her career, the usual young artist’s early steps, pulls the devastating news out of her parents that her beloved grandmother, Nai Nai has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

As her father says, “The Chinese have a saying: When you get cancer, you die.” As tradition has it, the family won’t tell her grandmother about the diagnosis. Instead, they have more-or-less forced Billi’s young cousin to get married to his girlfriend of 3 months so they will all have an excuse to visit one last time.

Billi’s parents instruct her to stay behind in New York as she is terrible at hiding her emotions, and she naturally ignores that request and arrives anyway finding that nearly the entire family is just as bad at the “poker face” thing as she is. While somewhat confused by the odd behavior of the group, Nai Nai is also thrilled to be surrounded by her family AND to have an opportunity to plan a wedding. The resulting family dinners and wedding-oriented field trips leading up to the big day are filled with instance after instance highlighting both the difference between Chinese and American culture with Billi serving both as our defacto guide, having left China with her parents when she was 3, as well as the typical generational divides. Throughout, the question of keeping the big secret is both constantly debated as well as being constantly in peril.

Wang manages to orchestrate the proceedings with a warm, knowing humor born out of character and the characters, as opposed to falling back on slapstick or anything broad or wacky. In doing so, the tear-jerking moments also don’t seem manufactured or demanded from the audience due to story breaks. To be more succinct, THE FAREWELL is genuinely funny and also effectively touching, because the audience is given a protagonist and surrounding characters that are charming and real. It’s almost impossible to write this without a cynical or mocking keystroke, but – THE FAREWELL will almost assuredly make you laugh AND make you cry.

Lulu Wang’s THE FAREWELL stars Awkwafina in a heartfelt and occasionally tear-stained comedy bridging the Chinese-American generational divide