The Farewell Is the Bittersweet Movie of the Year

There’s a profound balance between the warmth of family and the sadness of passing within The Farewell. The emotional and mortal repression is portrays are universal: we don’t want to think our parents or grandparents will ever die, but they will. Here is a film that tries to home in on that strange inner pain that comes with trying to keep up your spirits just one more day for someone who may not be here tomorrow.

Awkwafina as Billi; Tzi Ma as Haiyan and Diana Lin as Jian, Billi’s parents; Lu Hong as Little Nai Nai, Nai Nai’s younger sister; Jiang Yongbo as Haibin, Haiyan’s older brother; Chen Han as Hao Hao, Haibin’s son; and Aoi Mizuhara as Aiko, Hao Hao’s girlfriend, in The Farewell. Courtesy of A24

At the film’s center is Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao), a grandmother living in China. She has cancer, and it’s highly advanced, but her sister shields her from this information. Receiving the terrible news from the doctor, Nai Nai’s caring sister dismisses the CT scans as only showing “benign shadows,” and we soon learn that everyone in the family is on the same page. To meet with grandma one more time before she dies, the family members, who are spread throughout Japan and America, decide to stage a wedding as an excuse to come home and ensure Nai Nai’s last days are happy ones, spent without knowing the truth.

Everyone is on board with the plan except for Nai Nai’s granddaughter Billi (Awkwafina). She’s living in America, and things aren’t going so great for her, resorting to going to her parents’ house to do laundry. When she hears of Nai Nai’s illness, she decides she wants to go, but her parents are reluctant to take her—they know Billi is emotional and has a deep attachment to her grandma that may break her down into telling the truth. Though they ultimate agree to bring her to the gathering, her family is still constantly coaching her on keeping her emotions in check. Her mother insists it’s just a cultural way of keeping the peace: “Chinese people have a saying. When you get cancer, you die.”

Billi and her father. Courtesy of A24

Nearly every scene with the family getting together in China comes with a sweet sensibility layered on top of the rumbling somberness of mortality. This isn’t just felt in the tension of keeping Nai Nai happy but in all aspects of the family and culture. Billi will later speak with a Chinese doctor who speaks English and comes to understand lying about a diagnosis is not uncommon. In fact, denying feelings is very cultural, to the extent that some hire others to weep for them at funerals. Nobody wants to show their sadness—and, more importantly, nobody wants to confront their own mortality.

But humans are not robots, and we can’t always deny these feelings. Despite their best efforts, most of the family members crumble emotionally, especially at the wedding, which they use as the perfect opportunity to let the tears flow. This bittersweet aspect carries throughout the entire film, right up to the point where the family has to make what they believe to be the final farewell while keeping up face that they’ll see her again. Nothing lasts forever though and Billi can see it all around her, from the changing landscape of China to the reveal of a bad habit her dad has been hiding. She wants to hang onto every last remnant of a joyous youth that will never return.

Billi, Haiyan, Hao Hao, Aiko, Nai Nai, and Little Nai Nai put on a happy face. Courtesy of A24

There’s a fantastic sentiment expressed during a quiet moment between Billi and Nai Nai. Billi reveals she hasn’t accomplished as much as she thinks she should have at her age; Nai Nai scoffs, remarking that it’s not about what you do but how you do it. This film does a perfect job at showcasing how the pain of not letting the cancer diagnosis come out is perhaps more emotionally affecting than having the bombshell unleashed. The family gathering is not just about the dishonesty when it comes to Nai Nai’s condition but the dishonesty of our very existence, a heavy subject we don’t want to think about often. The Farewell perfectly plays on these deep fears while making a case for how it may be more meaningful to do some morning exercises with grandma than come clean about her cancer.

Courtesy of A24