The Farewell (2019, Lulu Wang) (Patreon)

50/100

"Write what you know" might be more succinct, but we'd be doing the world a big favor if we changed that dictum/bromide to "Use what you know as the foundation for imaginative writing." Wang's story made for a first-rate This American Life anecdote, by all accounts, and absolutely had the potential to form the basis of a terrific movie, had she not been so committed to honoring what actually happened (as opposed to recontextualizing the emotional truth of what happened). As is, there's so little in the way of either narrative or dynamic character interaction that The Farewell only manages to reach feature length by foregrounding its theme in dialogue and repeating those ideas over and over again. (Also by turning needless repetition into an ostensible joke, as when Billi's uncle explains the film's basic premise to her multiple times—well after it's been established—as he walks her to the hotel, with her invariable "I know" intended as a punchline, I guess.) Nearly everything's on the surface here, explicitly verbalized; Wang does demonstrate some poetic instincts, e.g. the ribbon or whatever it is flapping in the hotel air vent, but these touches get swamped by family members heatedly debating the relative merits of China, Japan and America; Billi's on-the-nose confession about feeling displaced; etc. Standard white-dude disclaimer applies: I don't mean to dismiss others' identification with Wang's experience, and am perfectly willing to accept that this just isn't meant for me. But when Billi's dad insists that she give a speech at the wedding*, and she gets up there and delivers the most banal recapitulation of the movie's theme imaginable, presumably because that's more "real" than a Rachel Getting Married-style setpiece would be—well, you're criminally wasting an actor as marvelously funny as Awkwafina, if nothing else. 

[Aside that I'll wind up cutting when I move this to Letterboxd: The moment pictured above, when Billi rests her chin on her mom's shoulder, made me conscious of how many cultural differences exist that I rarely notice or think about. Might be wrong but I don't think I've ever seen a child do that in a Chinese film, or in any Asian film for that matter. It feels very American, or at least western.]

* I realize it's tangential to Wang's interest, but the fake wedding really gets short shrift. How the hell does that work with the bride's family? How much money was spent on this ruse, and will an equivalent sum get shelled out later on a real wedding? Seems cost-prohibitive. We didn't need tons of details, but completely ignoring such questions meant that they kept rattling around my head, distracting me.