Butler's Cinema Scene

Shuzhed Zhao, Awkwafina

“THE FAREWELL”  My rating: B

98 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

Through set largely in a foreign country with its own language and cultural peculiarities, “The Farewell” hits universal themes of kinship and mortality with unerring accuracy and delicate grace.

Lulu Wang’s film, inspired by her own family, centers on two women — the Chinese American Billie (Akwafina), who lives in New York City and is struggling to establish a career as a writer,  and her beloved grandmother, Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao), back in China.

Billie’s parents — Haiyan (Tzi Ma) and Jian (Diana Lin) — brought her to America when she was a young girl.  As a result Billie is way more American than Chinese, although she retains enough conversational Mandarin to get by.

More than two decades in the U.S. have profoundly affected Haiyan and Jian as well.  He feels guilty about not having revisited his homeland in years; she is happy to have escaped the subservient lot of a typical Chinese daughter-in-law.

Then comes the news that Haiyan’s mother has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The doctors give her only three months.

But this fact is kept from the old lady; it is the custom of many Chinese families to keep such bad news from the patient until the last moment.  The rationale is that it allows the condemned to enjoy life for as long as possible.

Everyone in the family wants to visit Nai Nai to pay their respects, but how to do it without spilling the beans about her precarious health?

Awkwafina, Tzi Ma

A vast conspiracy is hatched. A hasty courtship is arranged between Billie’s laughably shy cousin Hao Hao (Han Chin) and a Japanese girl (Hao Hao’s parents now live in Japan). They will be married in China so that Nai Nai can attend; at the same time this ruse will allow family members to say their goodbyes without actually saying goodbye.

Billie learns of this scheme only as her parents are preparing to leave.  She has been left out of the plotting because of her deep fondness for her grandmother and her inability to hide her emotions. If she shows up all tearful and mopey for the wedding, Nai Nai is sure to discover what’s going on.

Nevertheless, Billie buys a plane ticket with her maxed-out credit card and shows up with dread in her heart.

But not for long. The joy that percolates through “The Farewell” is generated by Nai Nai, who in the hands of Shuzhen Zhao is an irrepressible force of nature, a white-haired bundle of energy and love basking in the glory of a reunited family.

In her grandmother’s comforting presence not even the mopey Billie can remain unrelentingly glum.  If the old lady is determined to live life to the fullest, who’s going to be a wet towel?

Wang’s screenplay lays out the dynamic among a dozen or more characters, and it’s with a shock of recognition that viewers realize that families are pretty much the same the world over.

Awkwafina is, of course, known as a comic actor, having stolen “Crazy Rich Asians” out from under everybody else in the cast.  Here she tamps down her manically droll persona to portray a young woman caught between two worlds and not wholly comfortable in either.

It is, in short, a dramatic performance, not a comic one, and it meshes perfectly with Shuzhen Zhao’s as Grandma.

“The Farewell” is not a big film, but it goes deep.

| Robert W. Butler