The Farewell (Lulu Wang)

[Ezee E]

IMDB

[Ivan Drago]

I loved this.

[Peng]

This lingers well the longer it sits with me, because I feel it a tad underimagined story-wise, in comparison to the central premise (and its iterations) and the protagonist's cultural/identity clash. Maybe it's just a personal problem in that as a (third generation) Chinese Thai who has to travel to my mother's Chinese-centric hometown province almost every year for Ching Ming since childhood, I find a lot of scenarios here more like warmly restrained signifiers of familiar culture depiction rather than deeply engaging scenarios. Still, the protagonist's grappling with cultural/identity clash feels more richly incisive the longer the film is in hindsight, Wang not feeling the need for a clearly defined "side" that has to be won later on; it's the reality of the way things are for many families that need to exist side-by-side, even if at times uneasily. And maybe my story complaint is just my way of wanting more of the lovely scenes between Awkwafina and Zhao Shuzhen, who are both good on their own but even more terrific and poignant together. 7.5/10

[Mal]

I found this to be just ... fine. I saw this six months ago and it probably left my mind within a few hours after seeing it. Awkwafina's performance didn't do much for me, but Shuzhen Zhao? She's pure joy. When she wasn't on screen, I wanted her back immediately. Wang's direction, well, its sufficient. I can't say I'll be excited for whatever she does next.

[Ezee E]

I found this to be just ... fine. I saw this six months ago and it probably left my mind within a few hours after seeing it. Awkwafina's performance didn't do much for me, but Shuzhen Zhao? She's pure joy. When she wasn't on screen, I wanted her back immediately. Wang's direction, well, its sufficient. I can't say I'll be excited for whatever she does next.

Agreed on Zhao. Hoping she gets some recognition this season for her performance.

Awkwafina was mostly "Awkwafina" but I enjoy her presence enough that it worked for me the whole way.

[dreamdead]

Yeah, we also liked it well enough, but it faded pretty quickly from our memory. The Achilles heel of this film seems to be that Awkwafina is a cipher for Wang in this film, yet the film is so single-focused on Shuzhen Zhao's health that we never learn what the grants, or pursuit of grants, mean to Awkwafina's character. That character gap makes large chunks of this film feel tethered to only one idea, rather than a multiplicity of ideas all struggling against one another.

In some ways, that single vision feels like a conscious rebuke of "character" led dramas--more often, though, it leaves our protagonist feeling like little more than a sketch of a character.

[Grouchy]

I think this is a fine enough film, and I'm a sucker for foreign traditions in a dramatized setting and culture clash movies... Yet, at times I felt like the movie's language was just too plain. The scene where Akwafina talks with the doctor in English or the late night conversation with her dad and uncle made me wonder, was there really not a more cinematic way to show these developments? Woody Allen might be talky, but his scenes never feel like exposition dumps the way the scenes in this movie play out.