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TheuLu Wang & # 39; s L & # 39; farewell the small dishonesty present in every family: submerged tensions between brothers and sisters, complicated relations with the in-laws, nothing to say to the personal life so that your parents do not worry. It's also a big white lie.
The film is centered on Billi (played by Awkwafina), a first-generation Chinese immigrant living in New York, who is struggling to pay his rent and succeed as a writer. Her father, Haiyan (Tzi Ma), and her mother, Jian (Diana Lin), took her to the United States at the age of ten, but she keeps in touch with her grandmother ( called Nai Nai, and played by Shuzhen Zhao) Phone Calls. During a visit at home, Billi's parents launch a bomb: Nai Nai is diagnosed with cancer and given three months to live.
But that's where the lie comes in. Nai Nai does not know. Her sister, who had the results, convinced the doctor to let her tell Nai Nai that everything was fine and the family decided that the matriarch could not learn more about her impending death. It is explained that in China, it is common to keep the final diagnoses in the elderly so that they do not face a long confrontation with mortality. Instead, to Billi's horror, the family decides that his cousin of Japanese descent will marry his girlfriend in Nai Nai City so that they can all say goodbye to each other without his knowledge. .
Billi is by far the most westernized member of the clan, initially feeling dismay at the thought that his beloved grandmother would be kept in the dark, so much so that her parents leave for China without her ( although she follows her quickly). Once in Changchun, where Nai Nai lives, preparations for the wedding begin and the family tries to say goodbye without saying goodbye.
L & # 39; farewell is presented as a comedy, and there are moments of humor: a sticky photoshoot with the clumsy hilarious bride and groom; a visit to Billi's grandfather's grave, where they lit him a cigarette (even though he was supposed to leave). But frankly, the comedy is stifled by the fact that everyone, except Nai Nai, is a little miserable during most of the film, under the weight of lies and his own sorrow. There is an ubiquitous feeling of sadness: adults conspire in dark, dark rooms, and Billi glimpses a sinister side of China that she has never encountered before.
Shuzhen Zhao, however, is in charming grandmother mode, handing out one-liners and imperiously commanding wedding staff and family members. She is just happy that her whole family is back.
Maybe that's the point. Billi's uncle, Haibin (Yongbo Jang), tells him that they lie to be able to mourn Nai Nai. for her. In China, he explains, people are part of a whole: family and society. The film introduces a clash between East-West culture, conducive to a cliché conflict between Billi's individualism and the traditional values of his family. However, Wang wisely stops not going down too hard on both sides and instead explores the tension without taking a hard line.
And even though Billi feels a cultural distance from the rest of his family, she is by no means a mocking Westerner. In an illustrative scene, her mother tells a heartwarming story of American hospitality: their new pastor discovered that Billi was playing the piano but could not afford lessons, so she opened the church for the practice. "It's America," says Jian. Billi quickly corrects it by saying that America is full of problems and that this is not the paradise that her parents claim.
Millennial cynicism, do you think? But the film slowly reveals that Billi had a hard and lonely childhood, too old to badimilate comfortably and too young to understand why. There are also allusions to financial difficulties and the problem of alcohol consumption of his father. Awkwafina shows a surprising depth as a young woman who drifts, who does not really know what she belongs to or where she is going. It is rare to see this point of view of Americans, especially in an article on immigration that does not contain clichés of inclusion and acceptance.
If you come to this movie in search of a predictable story about cultural shock, you will not find it. What Wang manages to do is use a particular problem, the big lie of the family, to explore a universal condition: how families choose to hide and hide uncomfortable or painful truths. And she suggests that this could not to be such a bad idea. That's at least understandable, and you sympathize with the serious attempts of the family to handle the death of a beloved matriarch.
I moved away from L & # 39; farewell to feel strangely disturbed. The conclusion is confusing and although I thought I would be on Billi's side, I came out less than certain. Wang and Awkwafina end up putting the audience in Billi's shoes, uncomfortably straddling the barrier between two cultures. He asks what exactly we owe to our family and to ourselves. Empathetic, funny and moving, this film will certainly be one of the best of the year.
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