The Farewell

Cast: Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Gil Perez-abraham, Shuzhen Zhou, Jim Liu, Ines Laimins, X Mayo

 Director: Lulu Wang

 98 mins

Lulu Wang's The Farewell mischievously announces in the opening credits that it is "based on an actual lie", but that's about as far as the filmmakers ever seem to go in terms of treating their story in any way outrageously. The film works because everybody's good intentions are not actually misplaced, even if they are counter-intuitive enough for the whole thing to be extremely funny. In China, an old lady visits her doctor along with her sister, and the news is not good – she has contracted stage four lung cancer, and as a result, most likely leaving her just months to live. Her granddaughter Billi (Awkwafina), whose parents emigrated to New York when she was a small child, takes the news like a hammer blow, but is even more shocked when father Haiyan (Tzi Ma) and mother Jian (Diana Lin) tell her that Nai Nai (Zhou Shuzhen) hasn't been told - the feeling is that people who know they are dying, stop living their lives. As a result, the family is planning a fake wedding between her cousin Haohao (Han Chen) and his girlfriend Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara) as an excuse for the whole family to gather with the grandmother one last time. However they are concerned that Billi won't be able to keep up the charade. She disagrees and travels from the USA to China to see her Gran.

By its very nature, this film rests on the connection we the audience make with Billi, and probably would have even if Wang hadn't made her wearing her heart on her sleeve part of the story. Happily Awkwafina has a delightfully expressive face, and that carries The Farewell more than just about anything else. Because we are is told at the outset that she's supposed to be an open book, they're inclined to focus on her and she never disappoints, funny and warm and very confused about how the values of her American and Chinese backgrounds intersect. It's not just that she's more than able to show the overpowering delight and sadness that the story calls for, but she ponders things well, and handles the holding-back nicely, occasionally choking back tears but just as often having Billi seemingly uncertain what her own expression should be. The rest of the cast is excellent too - their banter when they drop into English is perfect, always tinged with an extra sardonic edge as they sketch out as people with full lives beyond the small elements we see, with Zhou Shuzhen sparkling as Nai Nai. It's easy to see why she's beloved, and she's got a fantastic ability to hit the spot where there's seemingly no apparent reason to doubt that she's taking everything at face value - but is also wise enough to figure everything out and play along.  It also works because Lulu Wang has a concept where funny moments pop up naturally but never get pushed, which lets everything including the jokes feel more authentic. She also strongly communicates what it can mean to be an immigrant and specifically Chinese-American. Billi clearly has a foot in both China and America, though they seldom feel as if they're in opposition, even if they can be difficult to reconcile. This is a charming film that could have been something less if it had strayed from the path Wang takes, which is sentimental without ever being simplistic.