REVIEW
Writer-directorLULU WANGon how real-life experiences
informed her China-set arthouse comedy-drama
Top to bottom: Billi (Awkwafi na) with Nai Nai (Shuzhen
Zhao), her terminally ill grandmother, and the family in
The Farewell; Lulu Wang and crew member on set;
Billi embraces Nai Nai before heading back to the States.LULU WANG’STHE Farewellstarts with one
of the more unusual title cards in recent
memory: “Based on an actual lie”. Ironically,
that’s true. The movie is inspired by Wang ’s
own experiences when her ‘Nai Nai’ (paternal
grandmother), who lives in the Chinese city of
Changchun, was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
With Chinese custom preventing them from
telling the blissfully oblivious Nai Nai of her
condition, Wang and her parents flew out to
hold a celebration of her life in the guise of an
impromptu family wedding. It’s the sort of story
that virtually demands to be turned into a movie
and, after years of trying, Wang finally got the
momentum and finance she required after first
turning it into an episode of the podcastThis
American Life.
But it’s telling thatThe Farewellis not
presented as the Lulu Wang story. The central
character, played by Awkwafina in a performance
so good it elicited outrage when she wasn’t
nominated for an Oscar, is instead called Billi.
“The story’s not about me,” Wang tellsEmpire.
“I saw it as an American film about an American
woman who is a fish out of water in her own
family town. That’s a really powerful perspective.
It’s not a biopic. There are memoir elements to
the film, but I didn’t want Awkwafina to be doing
an imitation of me, and get caught up in that.”
That balance between fact and fiction was
something that often came up with Wang as she
worked on the fi lm. “What was challenging was
figuring out how to balance my responsibilities
to the film, to tell the truth, and my responsibility
to my family,” she admits. “It’s often diffi cult to do
that at the same time. And it doesn’t really matter
if it’s based on reality or not, because people are
watching it as fi ction.”
Even so, Wang found that she would take
episodes and instances from her real-life
experience and transfer them to fi lm. Billi’s
problems with the language barrier, for example.
“That’s authentic,” confi rms Wang. “The
language barrier defi nes her identity and her
relationship with her family. The kind of
conversation they could have was defi ned by her
limitations in the language.” Wang herself was
born in China, but left when she was six, and
found her knowledge of the language fading with
time. “I didn’t go to school with the language,”
she says. “I can speak a little bit, but I didn’t
always understand what was happening in the
room. It’s very realistic, not only to me but to
other people I know who are fi rst- or-second-
generation immigrants.”
In the fi lm, Billi’s Nai Nai is a delightful old
lady; constantly cheerful, despite encroaching
pain; taking time to practise tai chi; slipping Billi
money on the sly; feeding everyone in sight.
Chinese actor Shuzhen Zhao is fantastic in the
role (and, again, was snubbed by most major
awards), but Wang is at pains to point out thatThe truth about The Farewell