別告訴她
别告诉她
Jäähyväiset / The Farewell.
US © 2019 Big Beach LLC. – A24, Big Beach, Kindred Spirit and Ray Production present a Big Beach production in association with Depth of Field and Seesaw. – EX: Eddie Rubin. P: Daniele Melia, Marc Turtletaub, Peter Saraf, Andrew Miano, Chris Weitz, Jane Zheng, Lulu Wang, Anita Gou.
D+SC: Lulu Wang – based on her story "What You Don't Know" originally shared by Wang on This American Life (2016). Cin: Anna Franquesa Solano – colour – 2,35:1 – ARRIRAW 2.8K – master format: 2K – release format: D-Cinema. PD: Young Ok Lee. AD: W. Haley Ho. Set dec: Joseph Sorelle, Hanrui Wang. Cost: Vanessa Porter, Athena Wang. M supervisors: Susan Jacobs, Dylan Neely. M: Alex Weston. S: Gene Park. ED: Matt Friedman, Michael Taylor. Casting: Anne Kang, Leslie Woo.
M selections include:
– "Pathetique" (b.o. Beethoven: Klaviersonate Nr. 8 "Pathétique", 1799, Zweiter Satz, cantabile, Träumerei), arr. Alex Weston as a song without words.
– "Killing Me Softly With His Song" (comp. Charles Fox, lyr. Norman Gimbel [inspired by Lori Lieberman inspired by Don McLean], 1971).
– "Caro mio ben (1783, ascribed to Giuseppe Giordani) voc. Hyesang Park, piano Lulu Wang.
– "Come Healing" (Leonard Cohen, Patrick Leonard) perf. Elayna Boynton.
– "Senza di te" / "Without You" (Tom Evans, Peter Ham / Badfinger 1970) perf. Fredo Viola.
C (from Wikipedia): Awkwafina as Billi Wang (Chinese: 王比莉)
Tzi Ma as Haiyan Wang (王海燕), Billi's father
Diana Lin as Lu Jian (陆建), Billi's mother
Zhao Shuzhen as Nai Nai (奶奶), Billi's paternal grandmother
Lu Hong (playing herself) as Little Nai Nai, Billi's grandmother's younger sister
Jiang Yongbo as Haibin (海滨), Haiyan's older brother
Chen Han as Hao Hao (浩浩), Haibin's son
Aoi Mizuhara as Aiko (爱子), Hao Hao's girlfriend
Zhang Jing as Yuping, Haiyan's cousin
Li Xiang as Aunty Ling, Haibin's wife
Yang Xuejian as Mr. Li
Jim Liu as Dr. Song
Loc: Changchun, China. – New York City, USA.
Languages: Mandarin, English.
119 min
Festival premiere: 25 Jan 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
US premiere: 9 Aug 2019.
Finnish premiere: 24 Jan 2020 – released by Cinema Mondo – Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Janne Mökkönen / Sophie Beckman.
DCP viewed at Kino Engel 1, Helsinki, 24 Jan 2020.
The Chinese title of the film in translation: "Don't Tell Her".
A24 Press Notes: The Farewell: Synopsis: "In this funny, uplifting tale based on an actual lie, Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi (Awkwafina) reluctantly returns to Changchun to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai (grandma), has been given mere weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai Nai herself. To assure her happiness, they gather under the joyful guise of an expedited wedding, uniting family members scattered among new homes abroad. As Billi navigates a minefield of family expectations and proprieties, she finds there’s a lot to celebrate: a chance to rediscover the country she left as a child, her grandmother's wondrous spirit, and the ties that keep on binding even when so much goes unspoken. With The Farewell, writer/director Lulu Wang has created a heartfelt celebration of both the way we perform family and the way we live it, masterfully interweaving a gently humorous depiction of the good lie in action with a richly moving story of how family can unite and strengthen us, often in spite of ourselves."
AA: Lulu Wang's The Farewell – the Mandarin title of the film translates as "Don't Tell Her" – starts as a series of mundane observations and keeps growing towards a profound vision about the differences of Western and Chinese life.
It is a story of the Wang family, originally based in Changchun, with branches now extending into Shanghai, Japan and New York. The Wang family meets ostensibly for a wedding but in reality to spend time, as they believe, for the last time with the matriarch, "Nai Nai", who has been given by the doctors only months to live.
The central consciousness is that of Billi, a young Chinese American writer who grows to realize that Nai Nai is the heart of her familial love.
The theme is lying, and the tagline is "Based on an actual lie". Associations start running: True Lies... Liar Liar (associating with Lawyer Lawyer)... F for Fake... "Art is a lie that can lead us to truth" (Picasso)... "I am a sincere liar" (Fellini)... "Lie to me. Tell me all these years you've waited". Somehow, probably thanks to Pedro Almodóvar, I first hear the famous dialogue of Johnny Guitar in Spanish: "Dime una mentira. Dime que no me has olvidado en todos estos años". In Nordic countries we know Henrik Ibsen's livsløgn, called in German Lebenslüge, meaning a fundamental lie, a self-deception that becomes a foundation of life.
This story is different. Nai Nai is dying, and nobody tells her the truth because such is the tradition in China. Billi, coming from New York, is appalled. A series of comic and dramatic situations arise from the basic premise in which a wedding is celebrated while a funeral is being prepared.
But then Lulu Wang rises to a more profound level. Western life is based on the individual, Chinese life focuses on society. By lying to Nai Nai the family is saving her from the burden of knowledge and taking the burden to itself. Even the doctor seems to embrace this, becoming an accomplice in the deception.
Doctors' ethics are based on truth and honesty. But I have heard that there are risks of self-fulfilling diagnoses. The more we know, the better is our awareness of the mysteries of health. There is no message in The Farewell, but it may make us think that it pays to be an optimist.
And the family wedding / farewell party gives a lot to think about happiness in the different circumstances of Changchun, Shanghai, Japan, and New York.
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA:
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Aspiring Chinese-American writer Billi, 30, maintains a close relationship with Nai Nai ("paternal grandmother" in Mandarin) who lives in Changchun, China. After receiving a rejection letter for a Guggenheim Fellowship, Billi discovers from her parents, Haiyan and Jian, that Nai Nai has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and is predicted to have only a few months left to live.
Through deception and manipulation of medical test results, the diagnosis is kept a secret from Nai Nai herself. Nai Nai is, instead, falsely told that her recent doctor visits have only revealed benign findings. A wedding for Billi's cousin, Hao Hao, from Japan has been planned in China, as an excuse to unite the family to spend what is expected to be one last time with Nai Nai. Fearing Billi will end up exposing the lie to her grandmother, Haiyan and Jian tell her to remain in New York City.
Billi disobeys her parents' orders and flies to Changchun, shortly after the rest of the family arrive there. Billi assures her parents that she will not reveal the cancer diagnosis to Nai Nai. Throughout the trip, however, she clashes with the rest of the family, including the doctor treating her grandmother, over their deliberate dishonesty towards her grandmother.
Guilt-ridden, Billi expresses conflicted thoughts with her parents over the Chinese cultural beliefs that result in a family refusing to disclose such a life-threatening disease with the matriarch. One night, her uncle, Haibin, contends that the lie allows the family to bear the emotional burden of the diagnosis, rather than Nai Nai herself—a practice of collectivism that Haibin acknowledges to Billi differs from the individualistic values common in Western culture. Billi later learns that Nai Nai also told a similar lie to her husband up until his death when he was terminally ill.
On the day of the wedding, both Haibin and Hao Hao break down in tears on separate occasions but manage to proceed through the rest of the banquet as planned without raising Nai Nai's suspicions. To maintain the family lie, Billi intercepts Nai Nai's medical test results from the hospital and has it altered to reflect a clean bill of health. That night, Nai Nai gives Billi a hóngbāo, encouraging her to spend the money as she chooses. Billi admits that she wants to stay in Changchun to spend more time with Nai Nai, but Nai Nai declines, telling her that she needs to live her own life. When Billi reveals to her grandmother about the Guggenheim Fellowship rejection, Nai Nai responds by encouraging Billi to continue following her dreams, and that life is not about what things she does, but more about how she goes about doing them.
Billi keeps her promise to maintain the lie and shares a tearful goodbye with Nai Nai, as the rest of the visiting family members return to their homes in Japan and America. The credits reveal that six years after her diagnosis, the woman Nai Nai's character was based on is still alive.
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