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The Farewell Movie Review

The Farewell is a 2019 indie drama film directed by Lulu Wang and starring Awkwafina and Zhao Shuzhen. It’s such a thought-provoking movie.

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“Okay, when were you guys going to tell me this?

How could you let me find out like this?“

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Billi’s family returns to China under the guise of a fake wedding to stealthily say goodbye to their beloved matriarch — the only person who doesn’t know she only has a few weeks to live. Yes, this script is excellent. In fact, it’s one of the best screenplays of the year, there’s no question about it.

It explores so well the difference between Western and Eastern culture, in particular regarding death. Whereas in Western countries it would be even illegal to conceal the patient’s cancer status, in China the family has the power to hide that from the patient in order to protect her/him. And there is a lot of great intentions in that tradition, though it’s obviously morally questionable.

The film is at its best when it’s dealing with this issue as well as comparing life in America and China through its central character who is so well played by Awkwafina who showed here that she could be strong in serious roles and not just comedic ones such as ‘Crazy Rich Asians’.

Zhao Shuzhen is also excellent as Nai Nai who is the film’s most important character. The scenes between the two are easily the best of the bunch, and the dialogue is consistently terrific throughout the movie.

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However, The Farewell is just good and far from great due in no small part to its pacing which is so slow that the entire second act in particular is lagging. The movie isn’t long, but it felt like it at times. The first and especially the third act are great, but the second one lost its momentum as it has a lot of empty scenes to it unfortunately.

It needed much more dialogue overall to sell its very complex subject matter. And Lulu Wang did not direct the movie with a lot of flair in my opinion. The same goes for its technical aspects. But the script is so great that those flaws did not hurt in the long run.

The Farewell definitely needed better direction and pacing as the entire second act lost momentum and was overly slow, but the screenplay is so fantastic, the dialogue is excellent throughout and the performances are strong across the board. It’s an interesting film that explores a very thought-provoking subject matter.

My Rating – 4