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‘The Farewell': One wedding, one hospital, and a lot of laughs | Movie review

A Chinese American woman (Akwafina) and her family stage a wedding banquet in China as a ruse to gather relatives to spend time with the family's desperately ill matriarch in Lulu Wang's offbeat comedy 'The Farewell.'

From left, Jiang Yongbo, Aoi Mizuhara, Chen Han, Tzi Ma, Awkwafina, Li Xiang, Lu Hong and Diana Lin in "The Farewell." MUST CREDIT: A24
From left, Jiang Yongbo, Aoi Mizuhara, Chen Han, Tzi Ma, Awkwafina, Li Xiang, Lu Hong and Diana Lin in "The Farewell." MUST CREDIT: A24Read more

Comedy, they say, is tragedy plus time, but in The Farewell, tragedy and comedy occupy the same space at the same time, and get along just fine.

It’s one of the unique features of writer-director Lulu Wang’s delightfully unclassifiable new movie, about a family grappling with a beloved matriarch’s serious illness, a premise that turns out to be improbably funny.

The Farewell face most familiar to American audiences will be Awkwafina, the rapper/comedian-turned-actress (Ocean’s 8, Crazy Rich Asians) who here is playing Billi, a Chinese American (born there, raised here) who learns that her grandmother (Zhao Shuzhen) apparently has just a few months to live, and returns with her parents to China to say goodbye.

In a rather sneaky way.

Close relatives have decided it’s best not to tell grandmother that she’s terminal, so they devise the ruse of a wedding banquet, so that the extended family can gather and spend time with Nai Nai (Zhao), while preserving the secret of her serious illness (grandmother’s own sister and hospital liaison agrees to suppress key details of the unfortunate diagnosis).

Most of those gathered are concerned about Billi, who is not known for her poker face, and therefore considered the most likely to spill the beans. But Billi is better at keeping secrets than she seems — back in the States, she’s lost out on a prestigious writing fellowship, a blow to her personally, and to the bragging rights that would accrue to her parents at the highly competitive, passive-aggressive, extended-family dinner table combat enacted here.

Writer-director Wang brings this scene skillfully to life — relatives sharing generous portions of accomplishment and envy, an exchange that hints at something larger at work. The movie is very smart about the complications of our globalized world — the free movement of people trying to arbitrage opportunity, the strain this puts on cultural identity, on families who are separated by half a world, semi-united by social media, modern communications, ease of air travel (about half the movie is in English, half is subtitled).

Billi’s family remains close enough to realize how desperately detached they’ve become from one another. The pace of change in the world only increases this sense of dislocation — Billi returns home to realize her childhood neighborhood had been utterly erased, replaced. Is there a home to return to? America has changed her, China has changed.

But this is all backgrounded, downplayed. In the foreground are the very universal, indelibly drawn emotional nuances of family — the movie is very much an ensemble piece, and the cast is first-rate throughout. Wang also shoots and edits the movie in a way to emphasize pacing and comedy — her compositions are also unique and add immeasurably to the movie’s special tone.

Wang will often shoot something melancholy and touching, and pair it with something funny -- a moving wedding toast, while somebody sings booze-fueled karaoke, or dances drunkenly in the margin. She often finds ways to shoot these disparate events in the same frame, so you can laugh or cry, or try some combination of both.

This sounds like a tonal nightmare, but there is a sense of control and sure-handedness throughout. I don’t know what to call the result, but it’s a lulu.

The Farewell. Directed by Lulu Wang. With Awkwafina, Zhao Shuzhen, Diana Lin, Tzi Ma. Distributed by A24

Running time: 1 hour, 38 mins.

Parents guide: PG (thematic material, brief language and some smoking)

Playing at: Ritz East