“My goal is to leave people talking about the film, or talking about their own lives and their own family, or calling their grandma,” said Lulu Wang. “That’s my gift to the world. We should all call our grandmas more.”
” and “Ocean’s 8” — stars in “The Farewell” as struggling New York City artist Billi. The fictional stand-in for Wang makes a last-minute trek to China to say goodbye to her dying grandmother over the objections of her relatives, including her immigrant parents, Jian and Haiyan .
That’s because the real Nai Nai is still with us, six years after her initial diagnosis — and she remains unaware of both her condition and the premise of her granddaughter’s film. Lulu Wang:"I still think the same thing about the decision, which is that I can’t make a moral judgment around it." Wang’s great-aunt, Lu Hong, connects by phone in the wee hours of the morning from Changchun, where she lives in the same building three floors above her sister, Wang’s grandmother. In a few days she will fly to New York with her husband to see “The Farewell” — which marks her film debut — for the first time.
Wang had to convince her real great-aunt Lil Nai Nai aka Lu Hong to play herself in 'The Farewell." “We feel conflicted because we want her to see it,” she said. “We want her to see the success of her granddaughter. But for the sake of her health ... she’s been alive for so many years without knowing. I think maybe that’s part of the factors that made her live that long. But I don’t know. I will continue to play by ear.”
“They were like, ‘But what are the stakes? An 80-year-old Chinese grandma? Who’s gonna care?’ ” remembered Wang. “Now the film’s out and people are like, ‘Oh my God it reminds me of my grandma, I was sobbing,’ and I’m like, ‘THANK YOU.’ ” “I forget what the origin is,” she said. “I think it’s a Norwegian word, and it means a longing for a time and place that no longer exists. I think with Lulu’s story there is something to be said about remembering a time, a happy moment, a home where you felt like you belonged.”
For the cast, meeting members of Wang’s family helped them understand the complex personalities and experiences that shaped the family dynamic. Lin, who plays Billi’s mother, Jian, felt an immediate kinship with Wang’s mother as women who put down roots in new countries. ’ We don’t coddle you. I think the reason you may feel her mom is judgmental and tough is we believe if we tell kids too many good things, they will feel not humble and won’t achieve,” she said with a smile. “And we want you to be 100% perfect.”
By “we,” he means Asian American actors, who rarely get the chance to play meaty roles in Hollywood. “Very seldom will we get a situation where you’re so valued that they say, ‘We’re going to give you all the time in the world.’ Even in this case, there wasn’t enough time because it was a low-budget film. It wasn’t like we had a whole lot of resources.”
A week before the film’s release, the elder Wang described the experience of seeing “The Farewell” take off. He’d been a diplomat and his wife was working as a writer in China when they made the tough choice to leave after the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre. Billi and her family walk wearily home, feeling the weight of the secret they're keeping from Nai Nai.
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