Watching: The Farewell

[white_hart]

The Farewell, the new film from Chinese-American director Lulu Wang, is a semi-autobiographical study of family relationships and the emigrant experience. It's told from the point of view of Billi, an aspiring Chinese-American writer living in New York. When Billi's grandmother, Nai Nai, is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, her family make the decision not to tell her about the diagnosis; instead, they plan a wedding for Billi's cousin Hao Hao and his girlfriend of three months in order to have a pretext for one last family gathering, with Billi's family returning from the USA and Hao Hao's from Japan for the celebration.

This is a funny, touching and thought-provoking film, looking at what family means when parents and siblings can be separated by thousands of miles and go years without seeing each other. It's beautifully shot, too, with a gorgeous piano-led soundtrack, and Awkwafina's performance as Billi, struggling with the family decision to withhold the truth about Nai Nai's diagnosis from her and with the distance from her childhood memories of China, is terrific. We nearly missed this, as the Picturehouse website has been updated and the new listings are an absolute disaster; it's now impossible to see more than one day's listings at a time, and much harder to scroll through the wall-to-wall screenings of Downton Abbey to find anything more interesting, and The Farewell was only on a couple of times, slightly earlier than our ideal 6:15 slot, but I'm glad we managed to get to see it as it's very good.

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

The Picturehouse new website is absolutely terrible. Slow to load, confusing, and a huge drop in the information available. You used to be able to scroll through the week on a single screen and see all films and timings. Now you have to go day-by-day and film-by-film on that day.

[white_hart]

It is appalling. I can only conclude that it was designed by someone who assumed that everyone using it would have already decided what film they wanted to see and just wanted to check when it was on, and never even considered that people might want to see everything that was on and make a decision about which film to see based on what was convenient for them.

[nineveh_uk]

I am almost tempted to email and tell them. But probably won't.

[white_hart]

I tweeted at them about it but just got a standard “we have passed your feedback on to our web team” (and some other people agreeing that it was dreadful).