Film Drop // The Farewell by Lulu Wang @thumbelulu
I really enjoyed this tale of two cultures from writer and director Lulu Wang. "Based on an actual lie", we follow Billi, an NY-based writer who moved to the US when she was six but whose grandmother "Nai Nai" still lives in China and is recently found to be dying of stage four lung cancer. The family, however, has decided to keep this information from Nai Nai herself and arrange for a cousin to marry his girlfriend of three months as a guise for reuniting in China to say their last goodbyes to the family's matriarch.
The subsequent film is comedic and heartbreaking. The film constantly juggles clashes - of culture, generation, joy and tragedy, success and failure, the individual and the collective. Yet the more powerful force is a complex sense of familial love and togetherness that crosses borders and cultural differences. Playful yet poignant, this is a perceptive and entertaining film that will make you want to call your mum.