The Farewell

One of the best things about movies today is that some of them star Awkwafina. Raised in Queens, the rapper-actor (originally known for her YouTube videos) rose to commercial prominence last year with supporting roles in Ocean’s 8 and Crazy Rich Asians. She played a pickpocket in Oceans and a status-stan in Asians — the latter film making particular good use of her raspy wit and pseudo-hustler affectations. The sight of Awkwafina’s Lin, shameless célébrant of decadent lifestyles, snatching selfies on a wealthy family’s opulent staircase is a moment worthy of Jimmy Durante or Tichina Arnold. The slouched posture and shrugging smile amount to an on-camera ease that made her fellow actors look like trained seals.

So why, I ask, must this godsend of a comedian relegate herself to sober dramas about lying and death? I’m all for giving actors opportunities to explore unfamiliar terrain, but asking Awkwafina to look sad is like tying Gene Kelly to a rocking chair. Her greatest gift is her willingness to not take herself too seriously — something that this latest film does in abundance.

The movie is called The Farewell, and it is written and directed by Lulu Wang, who drew inspiration from events in her own life. Awkwafina plays Billi, a wayward New York writer who learns that her grandmother, or Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), is dying of cancer. But Nai Nai doesn’t know; the entire family — Billi’s parents included — have chosen to keep her diagnosis a secret. “We have a saying in China,” says Billi’s mother: “‘When someone gets cancer, they die.’” By this she means that the person loses their will to live; the family agrees that Nai Nai will be better off believing she’s in perfect health.

This doesn’t sit well with Billi, who decides to follow her parents to China, where everyone is convening at Nai Nai’s apartment under the pretext of a cousin’s wedding. (And the wedding actually takes place — even though the bewildered bride and groom have only been dating for three months. Quelle mascarade!) The elders fear that her emotiveness will give the game away, but Billi is undeterred: if this is her last chance to see her grandmother, she doesn’t want to miss it.

Watching this movie was, for me, a moment when the principle of respecting cultural differences became acutely difficult: I cannot witness The Farewell and help but believe that everyone would be much better off if Nai Nai had been told the truth. The grownups’ belief that there’s nobility in shouldering the emotional burden of an ailing parent is profoundly self-defeating; grief is fundamental to the process of death, not something to be disguised or circumvented. (And it shows on their faces — aside from Nai Nai, everyone in this family looks constipated with misery.)

Billi’s struggle to accept this approach offers a contrast to the family dynamic — but rather than following through on her instincts she sublimates them and ultimately helps preserve the lie. Wang uses Billi’s frustration as a means of reflecting on the differences between East and West, but that choice feels like a cop-out: if we are to understand that this film is autobiographical, then The Farewell comes across as an evasive action. It reads as Wang’s attempt to excavate her family woes without doing the dirty work of confronting them in person.

The best scenes are between Billi and Nai Nai, and it’s here that we see Wang’s purest reason for making the movie. The women share a rapport that infuses their exchanges with warmth and magic; this is due largely to the chemistry between Awkwafina and Shuzhen, an established Chinese actor making her U.S. film debut. She draws out her character’s liveliness and spunk, but Shuzhen also manages to smuggle a subtle pathos through her charm. Wang deserves credit for leaving the question of Nai Nai’s ignorance shrouded in ambiguity — just when I was starting to believe that Nai Nai didn’t know she was sick, a change in Shuzhen’s tone would cause me to redirect: she knows exactly what’s going on.

I settled into this certainty, yet when the movie was over I realized that my suspicion had never been confirmed. Nai Nai is not meant to know, so, officially, she doesn’t know. Twisted as it may be, there is something touching about the family’s determination to shield their matriarch, and in Nai Nai’s willingness to play along: Wang wants us to see that these lies are the product of an incredibly intense, cautious love.

Outside of Billi and Nai Nai’s relationship, though, much of the family proceedings are routine — check-marked as they are with wearied eye-roll gags and knowing clicks of the tongue. Nothing in family comedies bores me more than the presumed relatability of cutesy antics; often the humor stems from misrepresentations — if not outright stereotypes — of extended relations (e.g., My Big Fat Greek Wedding), and is nagging in its assumption that the eccentricities of a given family should be funny to everyone. Your goofy-looking second cousin’s champagne-and-cake-induced nausea doesn’t strike me as funny; in movie theaters as in life, my instinct upon seeing such a stumbling idiot is to immediately make for the door.

But who am I to miss the hearthstone for the in-laws? The Farewell is strongest as a portrait of a woman aching not only to mourn, but to reconcile her elusive sense of home. Stranded as she is between unpaid rent and fellowship applications, Billi gravitates toward her more-or-less solitary grandmother — an emblem of stability, and a means of escape. “I want to stay in China,” she confesses to her mother. “I want to stay with Nai Nai.” A touching sentiment, perhaps, but essentially a vicious one: held at arm’s length from her own feelings for much of her life, Billi is longing to contradict her upbringing and lay claim to something personal. If she stays with Nai Nai, she can posses her, and beat her parents at their own game of self-sacrifice. She wants to own and reject her past at the same time.

But, of course, Nai Nai would never hear of this. Billi must go home — if there’s little for her in America, there’s even less for her in China. They say farewell at the end, yet in more than one way the film leaves you with an understanding that their closeness hardly requires the accommodation of a physical visit. Halfway round the world, moving in tandem, their bond renders them inseparable; they step toward oblivion together.