{"id":8131,"date":"2019-08-15T06:39:57","date_gmt":"2019-08-15T10:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8131"},"modified":"2019-09-10T07:19:21","modified_gmt":"2019-09-10T11:19:21","slug":"the-farewell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8131","title":{"rendered":"The Farewell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This lovely new film written and directed by Lulu Wang starts\nwith that staple of family dramas, assembling the clan (trailer<\/a>). In this case, a\nwoman\u2019s sons and their wives and children are returning to Changchun, China,\nfrom Japan and America on the pretext of a family wedding, but in reality because\nthe family matriarch, Nai Nai, is dying. Though widely dispersed, they are\nunited in a conspiracy to keep that truth from her as long as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All except Billi (Awkwafina). She immigrated to America with\nher parents at age four and has adopted this country\u2019s attitudes toward\npersonal autonomy. This secret is too big, too consequential, too awful to\nkeep. So, when her young poleaxed-looking cousin moves up his wedding to a\nJapanese woman as a ploy to get the family together, Billi is discouraged from\nattending. She doesn\u2019t have the poker face necessary to maintain the deception.\nShe goes anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what do families do when they get together? They eat!\nOver a series of meals, including the eerily familiar wedding reception, the\nfood serves as a distraction when discussions become too intense and personal.\nGrandma Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) is lively and charming, and the mutual love\nbetween her and a devastated Billi is beautifully portrayed. They tell her she\nisn\u2019t sick, and that\u2019s the attitude she adopts. And, really, she manages the\nfamily and the wedding minutiae with energy. The family keeps trying to take on\nvarious tasks, but she\u2019ll have none of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I especially liked the portrayal of Billi\u2019s parents, her\nstunned father (Tzi Ma) and chilly, no-nonsense mother (Diana Lin), as well as\nthe poor Japanese bride (Aoi Mizuhara), gamely participating in everything\nwithout understanding a word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The movie delves deeply into cultural differences and, by\nexploring them in such vivid detail, establishes bona fide universals. Given\nthe subject matter, you would not expect this film to have a nice dose of\ncomedy, but it does. Families closely examined almost always do, in the midst\nof whatever chaos surrounds them\u2014painful wedding toasts eliciting surefire groans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christy Lemire<\/a>\nfor RogerEbert.com<\/em>, nails it when she\nsays Wang has \u201cmade a film about death that\u2019s light on its feet and never\nmawkish. She\u2019s told a story about cultural clashes without ever leaning on\nwacky stereotypes or lazy clich\u00e9s.\u201d See it!, then go out for Chinese food. You will<\/em> be in the mood.Rotten Tomatoes<\/a>\ncritics\u2019 rating 99%; audiences 88%.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This lovely new film written and directed by Lulu Wang starts with that staple of family dramas, assembling the clan (trailer). In this case, a woman\u2019s sons and their wives and children are returning to Changchun, China, from Japan and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Farewell - Your weekend movie pick. A wonderful film.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[272,1288,366,74,57,104],"tags":[468,1633],"class_list":["post-8131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedy","category-culture","category-drama","category-emotions","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-china","tag-lulu-wang"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Farewell.jpg?fit=547%2C563&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-279","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8133,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8131\/revisions\/8133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}