Review: The Farewell

The Farewell
Cert: PG / 100 mins / Dir. Lulu Wang / Trailer



Ah, we're finally getting into the Autumnal graveyard shift, I see. That time of year when distributors can release the smaller, more interesting films which wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell during the Summer or Winter blockbuster seasons (not to be confused with the stretch in late December / early January where we get all the Worthy Awards Bait™.

Writer/director Lulu Wang's film The Farewell centers around Billi (Awkwafina), a young Chinese American woman whose family engineers the phoney wedding of her cousin in order to visit the family matriarch Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao) en masse. The reason for this subterfuge is that Nai Nai has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, but doesn't know as the family are keeping this from her - determined instead for their beloved mother/grandmother to live for as long as possible in blissful ignorance.

PLENTY

Yeah, not going to lie, I struggled with this. And don't get me wrong, there's plenty to love here. Plenty. Wang's direction is quiet and focused, the screenplay takes its time and all of the performances are outstanding. Anna Franquesa Solano's scenic cinematography is solemnly graceful*¹, while Alex Weston's ominous, stripped back score wouldn't be out of place in an Almodovar film.

Yet as much as I admired the craft here, I just wasn't sure what I was supposed to get from it all other than "family politics up to and including life-threatening lies are basically a global language, and there's nothing you can do about that so just suck it up". While the film certainly tackles the issue of the non-disclosure, it refrains from really making any judgement on it, implicitly suggesting that the audience should too. And I just couldn't get over that hurdle.

GONDOR

The Farewell is often wryly funny, but the long silences leave the audience deliberately uneasy, as if the film is holding their hand somewhat, trying to goad reactions early on. And the moral of the story seems to be that enforced ignorance has demonstrable moral - and medical - benefits. The more time I spent in the company of Billi's family, the more actively I disliked them (apart from Billi and Nai Nai, obviously*²), and by the time the credits rolled I wished they'd all get stage four lung cancer, too.

And I hardly think that's the message the film is trying to impart...*³.



Oh, I don't know. Something like The Big Sick, I imagine.



If you know beforehand it's going to be your thing, sure.



Stream it.



That's entirely possible, although you've already worked out that I'm not really in any position to make that call.



Yeah.



No.



Level 1: The voice of Hamato is in this.





*¹ Genuine question for those who have seen The Farewell and know about these things: the film's conversational scenes seem to have some very odd framing where characters’ heads are lined up with the horizontal centre of the screen rather than being in the top half. You rarely see below anyone's waist so it feels like the film should be in 16:9 but has been cropped at the bottom to make a 2.35:1 presentation (even though the subs are in the correct place, so that’s definitely the final print). I'm not sure if this is a regular setup in Chinese cinema or another device to subconsciously throw the audience off kilter along with those glorious long, awkward silences. Any ideas? ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Not for nothing, but Nai Nai is Shuzhen Zhao's only credited screen role. I mean, leaping in at that stage in life, with that performance? FUCK YEAH. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Note to whom it may concern. If I ever develop a terminal illness, please tell me. Apart from anything else, the countdown would probably spur me back into finally catching up with The Walking Dead, so that'd be handy. Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. may just have to wait until the afterlife, though. ^{[ BACK ]}


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