The Farewell (2019)

Would I Lie To You?
or
"I Know. I Know. I Know. I Know. I Know."

Truth is stranger than fiction. 

That is usually the case. But, when that truth involves a lie, it makes things a bit complicated, like a knot in the time-space continuum. 

Given the political situation these days, I should be sick of lying and lying liars, but Lulu Wang's lovely film, The Farewell ("based on an actual lie" is the witty tag-line) is a tonic in its story of a lie done for a good cause, and rather slyly shows the ease and universality of lying in every-day life—"what they don't know won't hurt 'em" or "what they don't know will get me off the phone faster..."

Wang's film is based on an actual family story that she had related in a story on "This American Life"—that font of interesting story-telling that specializes in the absurd and the ironic (Steve Soderbergh's The Informant! came from there, as did Paul Feig's Unaccompanied Minors and Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me). It is filled with the expected humor and irony of a situation—a conspiracy, really—where family members go to a lot of trouble to maintain a falsehood for the best of intentions, even as the subterfuge inspires guilt and second thoughts for those who carry it out.

It involves a Chinese family who have split up around the world, but come together in a moment of crisis, despite misgivings and general anxiety about their actions. It revolves around the oldest member of the family.

The matriarch, affectionately called "Nai Nai" (played by Shuzhen Zhao), goes for a routine check-up about a cough. She gets some bad news. Or, more accurately doesn't get some bad news. She has cancer, and the prognosis is not good—she has maybe three months to live. She would have gotten the bad news, but her younger sister, "Little Nai Nai" (Hong Lu, basically playing herself), who took her to her appointment, is told the results. Little Nai Nai thinks, breathes and tells Nai Nai that nothing is wrong. It's just "benign shadows." Everything's fine. Nai Nai is relieved. Satisfied, they go home. And then, the story must be told and upheld.

Little Nai Nai contacts Nai Nai's children, the sons, one of whom, Haiyan (Tzi Ma) lives in the States and the other, Haibin (Yongbo Jiang) who lives in Japan, that their mother has three months to live. They are devastated. But, they agree to not tell Nai Nai. Because when you tell someone they have cancer, they die. But, if you don't tell them, they can enjoy their remaining time without worry and carefree. Ignorant, maybe, but carefree.

It's a bit like Schrodinger's Nai Nai; as long as she doesn't know, she doesn't have anything to worry about. 

Fine for Nai Nai. But, the family is grieving. So, they decide to compound the lie by planning a trip to China to say their good-byes to Nai Nai (without letting her know she's going away). The family decides to move up the marriage of her grandson Hao Hao (Han Chen) to his Japanese bride Aiko (Aoi Mizuhara) by a year as an excuse to make the visit and allow Nai Nai to revel in the celebration of her first grandchild's marriage...and for the family to say good-bye. There's a lot of mixed emotions in such the family trip, more so than the normal tensions amid interactions between three generations.

For granddaughter Billi (Awkwafina), it's especially rough, as she has a close relationship with her grandmother, who tells her that she has emotions "like a zoo," so much so that the family suggests that she not even go, lest she betray the secret. Of course, she does go and quite defiantly. When she first gets there, she is so afraid that her feelings will betray themselves that she acts like a zombie, which is almost as bad as giving full vent to her maelstrom of emotions.

Plus, she's torn. She's lived most of her life in America and so the farthest afield from the logic that it's better to keep the cancer prognosis from her grandmother. She's very conflicted about it, and her stoicism is explained away as "jet-lag" (not too dissimilar to "benign shadows"), but eventually she loosens up and is able to enjoy the time she has with her beloved Nai Nai.

A lot of conflicts, a lot of inherent comedy in that, and Wang's simple direction keeps the focus on the staid reactions of the family members, who have their own individual betrayals of the truth, while not betraying the lie.

It's a wonderful film with a final truth of irony. Six years after the diagnosis, "Nai Nai" (the real one) is still alive. So is, as the movie shows, exceptional, surprising film-making.

One hopes, though, that she never sees the movie.