The Farewell Dvd

The Farewell is a 2019 American-Chinese comedy-drama film written and directed by Lulu Wang. It stars Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Zhao Shuzhen, Lu Hong, and Jiang Yongbo. The film follows a Chinese-American family who, upon learning their grandmother has only a short while left to live, decide not to tell her and schedule a family gathering before she dies.

The film is based in part on director Wang’s life experiences, which she first publicly discussed as part of her radio story What You Don’t Know, which appeared as part of an episode of This American Life. The film was screened in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released in the United States on July 12, 2019, by A24. It received widespread acclaim from critics, with particular praise for Wang’s screenplay and the performances of Awkwafina and Zhao Shuzhen. At the 77th Golden Globe Awards the film was nominated for two awards including Best Foreign Language Film, with Awkwafina winning for Best Actress – Musical or Comedy.

The Farewell is a bilingual film in English and Mandarin Chinese. The Chinese title is 别告诉她; (bié gàosù tā), literally “Don’t tell her.”

Plot

Aspiring Chinese-American writer Billi maintains a close relationship with Nai Nai (paternal grandmother) who lives in Changchun, China. After receiving a rejection letter for a Guggenheim Fellowship, Billi discovers from her parents, Haiyan and Jian, that Nai Nai has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and is predicted to have only a few months left to live.

Through deception and manipulation of medical test results, the diagnosis is kept a secret from Nai Nai herself. Nai Nai is, instead, falsely told that her recent doctor visits have only revealed benign findings. A wedding for Billi’s cousin, Hao Hao, from Japan has been planned in China, as an excuse to unite the family to spend what is expected to be one last time with Nai Nai. Fearing Billi will end up exposing the lie to her grandmother, Haiyan and Jian tell her to remain in New York City.

Billi disobeys her parents’ orders and flies to Changchun, shortly after the rest of the family arrive there. Billi assures her parents that she will not reveal the cancer diagnosis to Nai Nai. Throughout the trip, however, she clashes with the rest of the family, including the doctor treating her grandmother, over their deliberate dishonesty towards her grandmother.

Guilt-ridden, Billi expresses conflicted thoughts with her parents over the Chinese cultural beliefs that result in a family refusing to disclose such a life-threatening disease with the matriarch. One night, her uncle, Haibin, contends that the lie allows the family to bear the emotional burden of the diagnosis, rather than Nai Nai herself—a practice of collectivism that Haibin acknowledges to Billi differs from the individualistic values common in Western culture. Billi later learns that Nai Nai also told a similar lie to her husband up until his death when he was terminally ill.

On the day of the wedding, both Haibin and Hao Hao break down in tears on separate occasions but manage to proceed through the rest of the banquet as planned without raising Nai Nai’s suspicions. To maintain the family lie, Billi intercepts Nai Nai’s medical test results from the hospital and has it altered to reflect a clean bill of health. That night, Nai Nai gives Billi a hóngbāo, encouraging her to spend the money as she chooses. Billi admits that she wants to stay in Changchun to spend more time with Nai Nai, but Nai Nai declines, telling her that she needs to live her own life. When Billi reveals to her grandmother about the Guggenheim Fellowship rejection, Nai Nai responds by encouraging Billi to keep an open mind and not get hung up on this failure, rather than be “the bull endlessly ramming its horns into the corner of the room.” She also says that life is not about what things one does, but more so about how one goes about doing them.

Billi keeps her promise to maintain the lie and shares a tearful goodbye with Nai Nai, as the rest of the visiting family members return to their homes in Japan and America. The credits reveal that six years after her diagnosis, the woman Nai Nai’s character was based on is still alive.

Cast

Awkwafina as Billi Wang (Chinese: 王比莉)
Tzi Ma as Haiyan Wang (王海燕), Billi’s father
Diana Lin as Lu Jian (陆建), Billi’s mother
Zhao Shu-zhen as Nai Nai (奶奶), Billi’s paternal grandmother
Lu Hong (playing herself) as Little Nai Nai, Billi’s grandmother’s younger sister
Jiang Yongbo as Haibin (海滨), Haiyan’s older brother
Chen Han as Hao Hao (浩浩), Haibin’s son
Aoi Mizuhara as Aiko (Japanese: 愛子), Hao Hao’s Japanese fiancée
Zhang Jing as Yuping, Haiyan’s cousin
Li Xiang as Aunty Ling, Haibin’s wife
Yang Xuejian as Mr. Li
Jim Liu as Dr. Song