The Farewell (2019)
(film  100 minutes)

Directed by: Lulu Wang
Language: Mandarin, English

Rating: 6/10 | Yaser Tohidi
March 29, 2020

A Chinese-American girl Billi who moved to the US with her family when she was six year old is in the middle of crisis over missing a fellowship. Her grandmother Nai Nai is terminally ill in China. This is kept a secret from her. A wedding for Billi’s cousin is planned just as an excuse for the family to see her one last time. Billi’s uncle and his family who live in Japan bring the Japanese girlfriend of Billi’s cousin as the bride. Billi is banned from joining the family because she is unable to hide her emotions. But she travels anyways and joins the rest of the family and perfectly hides the illness though it is very hard for her to understand why her family does not tell the truth to Nai Nai and how fair that is to keep such a fact from someone. 
Even though Nai Nai coughs from time to time, she is cheerful and lively and advices everybody else to have a healthy life. She insists on organizing a big bouquet for the wedding which was not of course part of the plan. She leads the tasks and arranges for a big wedding. Wedding takes place and everybody hides the illness. 
The Farewell brings a fine comedy out of cultural differences between east and west. And through that, it frames a bright drama out of the dark tragedy of not letting someone know her illness and the time left for her. 
The movie portrays not only the gap between different generations of immigrants but also the adaptations an immigrant do, adaptations which make her everyday more far from its origins. These are all significant sources of alienation. These are Billi’s life. During the trip, she realizes how much she missed China although she is more American now. She finds strong relations with people and space around herself in China although she left there long time ago. However, she becomes the hero of rejoining these differences and proposing a way out. This is pronounced symbolically in her run to the hospital to keep the medical result secret and in the beautiful final of the movie where Billi grunts in the streets of New York the same way Nai Nai was grunting outside her house to get rid of bad toxins when she was doing some meditation/sport.  
On the down side, Billi’s aim to become an independent girl is not dramatized and thus seem a bit out of context each time it’s brought up. The Farewell also lacks creating supporting actors. Mother, father, uncle, aunt and the cousin are not built. The movie is just able to create Billi and Nai Nai. So, the feelings of others cannot be communicated with the viewer and the related scenes seem extra and useless. The Farewell’s rhythm sometimes feels lost especially in the middle where the wedding is organized.

Click here for wikipedia page