Movie Review: The Farewell

Goldie Eder, LICSW, BCD

The Farewell, director Lulu Wang’s 2019 hit film about a family dealing with the terminal cancer of the matriarchal grandmother (or Nai Nai, as she’s called in Chinese), starts off with the title “Based on an actual lie.” Indeed, there are a number of “lies” and secrets throughout this cross cultural study of a family anticipating the loss of a beloved figure. Billie (played with great subtlety by the actress-rapper Akwafina) has moved with her parents to the US when Billi was 6 years old. Billi is now a young adult, and her parents learn that Billi’s paternal grandmother is diagnosed with terminal cancer with a few months to live, according to the doctors in China where “Nai Nai” still lives. But instead of the family telling Nai Nai directly about her diagnosis and prognosis, they collude in telling her that she has “benign shadows” on her lungs and one of the sons gets her “Vitamins” over the Internet rather than telling her the truth. The family concocts a reason for everyone to gather in China: a hastened wedding of grandson Hao Hao to a Japanese woman he’s been dating for three months. Gather they do, but the parents want to exclude Billi because they fear she’ll blow their cover. But Billi, very attached to her Nai Nai, flies to China and joins the family reunion, questioning the decision to keep Nai Nai in the dark, but playing along with the family program. Nai Nai couldn’t be happier to see her family reunited, and focuses her considerable energy in planning a wedding banquet extravaganza, very upset that the menu will consist of crab instead of lobster. She wants everyone to act like Hao Hao has been dating his Japanese fiancé a lot longer than three months (“You know how people talk!”), and wants Billi in particular to act outgoing and enthusiastic at the wedding. Mostly, though, she wants Billi to find someone to marry and have someone to take care of her. Billi and Nai Nai discuss the merits of depending on a man versus being independent, and Nai Nai both agrees on this with Billi but also sees if the handsome British educated, English speaking doctor at the hospital is available for marriage to Billi.

What resonated for me was how culturally specific the handling of this dilemma was for the family still living in China versus those who had emigrated to the US (the part of the family who’d gone to Japan was still invested in the traditional approach of perpetuating “the lie”)--but also how universal were the feelings of the characters, and how we come to entertain the merits of not telling the person about their impending death through understanding the basis of this course of action. As her uncle tells Billi and her father when they question the decision to not tell Nai Nai: “You guys moved to the West long ago. You think one’s life belongs to oneself. In the East, a person’s life is part of a whole family. Society. You want to tell Nai Nai because you’re afraid to take responsibility for her. Because it’s too big of a burden. If you tell her, then you don’t have to feel guilty. We’re not telling Nai Nai because it’s our duty to carry this emotional burden for her.” But even though the ruse is kept up, Nai Nai sends the maid to see what the x-ray ordered by the doctor reveals, perhaps indicating that she herself is not totally believing or accepting that she is “fine.” Billi then colludes with the family in perpetuating the myth, but of course I won’t reveal here how it all ends .

Our guest discussant is Ming Chang, LMHC. Ming, herself an immigrant from China, is a therapist practicing in Boston, and on the faculty of the New England Center for Existential Therapy in Cambridge. Come hear her perspective on this family, the cultural issues, and what she would do with such a family were they to come to her office. Oh, wait--- her office here in Boston or in China?