Right after I found out I had gotten in to Sundance, she notes, I was with my same friend at the same restaurant. So I was driven to make the film by the juxtaposition of love and joy with grief and being angry with my family, but on some level understanding it at the same time, and just having a lot of questions and not having any answers for them., If I talked to my American friends, would have the American answer, and then my family would have the Chinese answer, the Chinese American director said. The Farewell's Lulu Wang and Awkwafina want you to call your grandma My mom's a writer and my dad was a former diplomat and they would be in the apartment. She shares a tearful goodbye with Nai Nai as the visiting family members return to their homes in Japan and America. That direct connection. The Farewell opens with a title card declaring that the film is "based on an actual lie" from director Lulu Wang's own life. -NPR. She really became all our grandmas. Hed seen her movie, loved her voice, was interested in working with her on something. "There's a spiritual connection or energetic -- spiritual maybe sounds too whoop-dee-doo. Did I end up conscripting an entire films cast and crew into this lie? Lessons From The Farewell Director Lulu Wang at the Miami Film Festival "[25] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 89 out of 100 based on 47 critic reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Fearing Billi will end up exposing the lie to her grandmother, Haiyan and Jian tell her to remain in New York City. Wang's great-aunt, Lu Hong, connects by phone in the wee hours of the morning from Changchun, where she lives in the same building three floors above her sister, Wang's grandmother. Lulu Wang was in Berlin in 2013, editing her first film, when she got the call: Her grandmother in China, whod briefly taken her in when her parents fled the country in 1989, was terminally ill. "It went into this whole conversation where I was like, 'Yeah, [in China] I had my grandma and then my other grandma and uncles. And her friend saw a review of it and was so proud of her, one of her longest friends, and sent it to her.. The Farewell director Lulu Wang on challenging "what - Vox Once, when she met with Wang's real grandmother, they pretended that it was a personal visit, and although the real Nai Nai was told that Shuzhen would be playing her, she wasn't told that she'd be the main character. 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. A writer and classical pianist by trade, Wang, who was born in Beijing and immigrated to Miami when she was six, first told her absurdist family drama as a short story and then as a podcast, in collaboration with This American Life and producer Neil Drumming. Is this evidence that there's some truth to the line in the film, "People dont die of the cancer, they die of the fear"? And by the time we made the film, everyone was in China because they understood my perspective. Rather than revealing the news directly to Wang's 80-year-old grandmother, doctors instead told her grandmother's sister (Wang's Great-Aunt Hong Lu) the news, who passed it along to the family. Then Lum sent back a tape. 10 Best Movies of Sundance 2019. Awkwafina was cast as Billi, Wangs avatar, while her own aunt Hong Lu played the aunt in the film, Little Nai Nai. Movies based on true stories always feature a degree of creative license. Wang claims her grandmother eventually found out from discussing the movie with her little sister, who plays herself in the movie. Coronation Street actress Barbara Young dies aged 92, Nurses strike continues: Major disruption for NHS services in England, Additional flight to evacuate Britons from Sudan today, Ryanair cancels 220 flights over May 1 bank holiday due to strikes, Hardcore coronation fans already camped outside Buckingham Palace, One dead and seven injured in Cornwall nightclub knife attack. Wang and her family would have liked to keep it that way, but due to Chinese-language reviews published ahead ofThe Farewell's upcomingrelease in China, Wang's grandmother found out the truth. I knew I had to make this film for me and anyone else who may be understood me, she said. Brooklyn, US. When Wang pitched her setupa Chinese-American woman returns to her home country with the other expatriates in her family under the guise of a wedding, but with the true intent of seeing the family matriarch before she diesshe was met with a flood of criticism from both Chinese and American financiers: Who is this movie for? I just didnt know what the tone would be until later.. Based on Wangs own life, the film centres on a Chinese American womans family refusal to tell the grandmother that she has cancer. "I thought, if I cant make it the way I want to make it, I dont want to make it at all. Like Wang herself had been, Billi is a struggling artist living in New York. Because "The Farewell" has yet to come out in China Wang said the Chinese distributor is eyeing a spring release, spurred by the film's success in the U.S. her grandmother still hasn . The whole atmosphere of the trip, the wild way we were keeping this story up I wasnt sure how I was going to turn it into a film. Talking about "The Farewell" - Boston College Wang's Nai Nai is still alive today but hasn't seen the film because she still doesn't know. ", It's easy to summarize The Farewell as being about one young woman's internal culture clash, but there's a transcendence to the film easily summed up by the recurring image of the sparrow. It brought joy to all of us.. ", The reasoning behind keeping a secret like this from the real Nai Nai is "to make sure the person still lives a happy and carefree life, and that their condition does not get worse," Shuzhen said, and from her experiences meeting with Nai Nai, that's been the case. So she fashioned the film accordingly, resisting requests from American and Chinese backers to make a broader, more sentimental film. She says she had many disheartening encounters with American and Chinese financiers who wanted to include a "prominent white character into the narrative, and punch up the nuanced drama to turn it into a broad comedy. Initially, I wanted her to play Nai Nai, the director admits. How Lulu Wang's Grandmother Finally Finds Out the Secret - YouTube They had all their friends over talking about literature and movies and culture and drinking and smoking, and Im a kid and I would wake up in the middle of the night and they would be like, 'come join us,' and there was just a sense of community and family and friends, and it all made sense. Starring Awkwafina as a struggling writer in New York and based on a "true lie" from Wang's life, the film tells the story of a Chinese-American family that, upon learning their grandmother has cancer, decides not to tell her and instead stages a mock . Lulu Wang's Nai Nai did join the Chinese Army at age 14 to escape an arranged marriage. THE FAREWELL director Lulu Wang tells the harrowing tale about how she kept the content of her film about her grandmother a secret from her grandmother while. Lulu Wang, the writer-director behind 'The Farewell. But regardless of when it happens, The Farewell will eventually open in China, and the family might finally have to drop the ruse. Theres just one tiny bit of information shes not getting. On the first day of shooting, Nai Nai wanted to bless the set, causing Lulu to run around and confiscate dozens of crew shirts bearing the productions Nai Nai LLC logo. "She gave me gifts and treated me like family and was so energetic and so full of life that you could not tell she has any kind of illness, period.". In related news, Awkafina has just become the first Asian American actress to win a Golden Globe inthe Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy category for her role inThe Farewell. The Farewell: Lulu Wang reveals that her grandmother has figured out When Lulu Wang initially recounted the tale of her family's unusual struggle with a cancer diagnosis, . Shes like, Well just tell her that movies are fiction and none of it actually happened. In 'The Farewell,' The Bad News Bearers Keep A Secret. The tiny creatures first appear in an early scene when one mysteriously breaks into Billi's Bushwick apartment. When the movie went into production last year, not only did Wang cast her real aunt (who instigated the lie), she shot it two blocks from her grandmothers neighbourhood in Changchun and, let her visit the set. Like in the movie, Lulu Wang, her parents, uncle and cousin went to China for the main purpose of visiting her grandma. Zhao Shuzhen plays Nai Nai, the 'Farewell' character everyone loves Come along for the ride! I got to share the American part of my life with my family in China and the Chinese part of my life with my colleagues. The Farewell was a huge hit at Sundance, sparking a bidding war that ended with Wang turning down an additional $8 million from a streaming service to tie her wagon to A24, the film company behind Moonlight and Lady Bird. [7][6], Wang said that the film was based on her grandmother's illness, stating that "I always felt the divide in my relationship to my family versus my relationship to my classmates and to my colleagues and to the world that I inhabit. The Farewell, Wangs dramedy about her experience, turns her misadventure into a funny, bittersweet story about a Chinese-American woman named Billi (Crazy Rich Asians Awkwafina) caught between maintaining a shiny, happy deception and the painful process of saying goodbye to a loved one. Who else can I talk to about this, Lulu? Incredibly, Nai Nai, and the family secret, survived long enough for her to discover both the deception . Later, she sees a similar bird resting on the windowsill of her Chinese hotel room. Lulu Wang is the writer-director behind The Farewell, which follows a Chinese-American woman as she returns to her family's homeland to say goodbye to her grandmotherwho doesn't . Hong became the de facto authority for her fellow performers on whether the interactions of the screen family felt like the real thing; she and Shuzhen began hanging out together off-set a lot and, according to Lulu, started calling each other sister. The director had made good on the promise to shoot The Farewell in her still-living grandmothers hometown of Chungchun, ensuring that a high level of authenticity would be built in to the story. "They were originally going to shoot in Nai Nai's real apartment and then eventually realized that would be too much. "It's so meta," said Wang with a laugh. Nobody wants to tell my story. ' Wang admits, referring to her stars famous, foulmouthed YouTube rap. Journey deeper into the true story behind The Farewell by watching an interview with writer/director Lulu Wang, whose family's story provided the basis for the movie. She decided to write out the tale of deceiving her grandmother as a short story. Gallery The Best Twist Endings of All Time. Saying Goodbye: Revisiting Lulu Wang's The Farewell "Whenever Im there with my family, I basically revert to a childlike state. But I could just tell there was something really rich there.. Written and directed by the Chinese filmmaker, The Farewell casts rapper-turned-actress Awkwafina in her first leading role as Billi, a Chinese-American student playing a form of Wang herself. The episode also gave her the high card and the courage to ask for everything she wanted. Why Lulu Wang keeps her film a secret | Inquirer Entertainment It's that this familyare are linked across continents; their intangible bonds expressed perfectly in that final visual. Chinese or American audiences? She wrote and directed the new film "The Farewell," which is based on her experience after her Chinese grandmother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung . With Shuzhen Zhao, Awkwafina, X Mayo, Hong Lu. never to see her grandma again, the fade to black blooms into footage of the real Nai Nai still alive and zesty six years later. "[The studios] wanted it all in English, or as a very broad comedy," she told the Seattle Times. But for me, going back and having agency allowed me to see the city as an adult. As much as The Farewell is about confronting loss, it's also distinctly about place. Nai Nai is, instead, falsely told that her recent doctor visits have only revealed benign findings. ", "Gotham Awards: 'Marriage Story,' 'The Farewell,' 'Uncut Gems' Lead Nominations", "Lulu Wang's 'The Farewell' wins Sundance London 2019 audience award", "#RomaFF14 | "Santa subito" di Alessandro Piva vince il "Premio del Pubblico BNL", "NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW ANNOUNCES 2019 AWARD WINNERS", "Artios Awards: 'Hustlers,' 'Knives Out,' 'Rocketman' Among Casting Society Film Nominees", "The 3rd Annual Hollywood Critics Association Awards Nominations", "The 2019 Detroit Film Critics Society Awards Nominations", "2019 San Diego Film Critics Society's Award Nominations", "2019 Atlanta Film Festival Award Winners", "This year's Seminci Golden Spike is bound for Mongolia", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Farewell_(2019_film)&oldid=1149341986, Lu Hong (playing herself) as Little Nai Nai, Billi's grandmother's younger sister, This page was last edited on 11 April 2023, at 16:34. Guilt-ridden, Billi expresses conflicted thoughts with her parents over the Chinese cultural beliefs that result in a family refusing to disclose a life-threatening disease. We kept asking ourselves, is it ethical to make her go through this traumatic experience again, take after take? But what about the real grandmother that the story is based on? Theres a version of this movie in some alternate universe where the laughs are broad, your heartstrings are constantly under attack, everyone learns a life lesson, and youre left with the recognizable taste of saccharine in your mouth. Awkwafina as Billi and Zhao Shuzhen as Nai Nai. Scene Stealer: The True Lies of Elisabeth Finch, Part 2. The events dramatized in the movie happened to Wang in 2013. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google, This website and its associated newspaper are members of Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). -This American Life, Yes. Soon, Nora Lum, a.k.a. ", Wang hadn't been to Changchun since she was 6 years old, and when she returned to film The Farewell, she found her relationship with her surroundings evolve beyond her childhood nostalgia. Maybe she could get it published in The New Yorker, she thought. "It's hard to say," says Wang, "because I know other people who've made similar decisions and they have a lot of regret or they still feel like the person deserved to know" (People). 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. Casi Moss/Courtesy of Big Beach. It's developed a lot more. Films take so long to make. Dramatic Competition section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival[4] and was theatrically released in the United States on July 12, 2019, by A24. I was actually making a screwball romantic comedy when this happened to me, says Wang, referring to her debut feature, Posthumous (2014). Her grandmother finally told him the truth in the hospital three days before he died. When filmmaker Lulu Wang decided to make a feature about the strange turn of events that followed her beloved grandmothers cancer diagnosis, though, she faced a more unusual challenge: how to make a movie based on an actual lie. In a Slate interview, director Lulu Wang revealed that The Farewell led to her own grandmother discovering she had cancer. The website's critics' consensus reads: "The Farewell deftly captures complicated family dynamics with a poignant, well-acted drama that marries cultural specificity with universally relatable themes. In an interview with Vox, Wang was asked whether her grandmother will see the film. Director Lulu Wang On 'The Farewell' And How We Break Bad News - NPR "I said something that she responded to which was: 'In China, I felt whole because I had my entire family and then I came to the U.S.,'" Wang says, "She was saying she's never felt whole in her life. In The Farewell, Billi (Awkwafina, left) returns to China to spend time with her grandmother who doesn't know she is dying thanks to an . And the review said, The film is based on Lulu Wongs real life. But we haven't talked about it, so I'll see what happens when I see her. This caught the attention of producer Chris Weitz who helped secure financing for the film. She's always felt like an outsider. [20][21] The film expanded further to over 800 theaters in the next few weeks, $1.4 million from 861 theaters, $882,623 from 816 theaters and $841,414 from 891 theaters. with her cast and crew toshoot the movie there. Meet Awkwafina, the Breakout Star of 'Crazy Rich Asians' But its the surprisingly unsentimental mix of personal storytelling and universal, culture-clash dynamics thats made The Farewell stand out the melding of the familiar and the specific, the accessible and the art-house aestheticized, that comes from a singular voice. Filmmaker Lulu Wang and star Awkwafina on "The Farewell," the family drama "based on an actual lie" about a woman visiting her beloved grandma in China. It was 2016, and Lulu Wang was done with filmmaking. [15] A fully Mandarin-subtitled version of the film played in select theaters on September 8, 2019. Last year, Wang headed to Changchun, China, and her grandmothers neighborhood to tell her story. To me, its a very American story because Im American, and its just about me going back to a place where I dont understand and Im trying to understand, she said. Weve been able to stall her by telling her were not allowed to send it over. That immediacy of storytelling reminded me why I became a storyteller in the first place.