Awkwafina got her start as a Youtube comedic rapper, and didn’t even earn her first live acting credit in anything but a short film until 2016’s Neighbors 2, so her rise from that to a Golden Globe for Best Actress – which she won this weekend for her outstanding lead performance in The Farewell – is one of the more incredible and heartening stories out of the movie world in some time. (Was Cate Blanchett all teary with joy when Awkwafina won? I kind of think she was.) I haven’t seen all of the nominated actresses’ films in that category, but I can say Awkwafina gave a performance worthy of awards, and without her and the way her coarse, rational character contrasts with the rest of her slightly loopy family, The Farewell wouldn’t be half the film it is.
Awkwafina plays Billi, a 30ish, struggling Chinese-American writer who has just learned she didn’t get a fellowship she was hopeful she’d land, when she finds out that her grandmother in China, to whom she was once quite close, is dying of lung cancer. The catch is that the family, adhering to a cultural tradition, isn’t telling the grandmother that she’s dying, so she can continue to live her life as if everything was normal until it reaches a point where the truth becomes inevitable (if it ever does). Billi isn’t on board with the plan, since it involves lying to a beloved family member, so her parents tell her not to come with them to China for what is presumably the last visit they’ll have with Nana. Of course, she defies them and flies there on her own, and hilarity ensues in the face of a terminal diagnosis, from the internecine squabbles about telling her, Nana’s desire to find Billi a husband, culture clashes with other cousins who remained in China, and, oh by the way, the sham wedding of Billi’s first cousin to a woman h met in Japan (who speaks no Chinese of any dialect) that is the excuse for everyone coming to visit Nana at once.
Part of the beauty of the comedy of The Farewell is that the premise is rather simple: They’re not telling Nana she’s dying and they’re all there for a fake wedding. Everything else flows naturally from that setup; you just had to get the characters in one place for an obnoxiously passive-aggressive argument about whether the United States or China has the superior culture or is the better place to send your child for college to break out. Billi is often in the middle of the comedy, but not necessarily its prime mover; sometimes she’s Bob Newhart, the ‘normal’ one surrounded by crazy people, providing the voice of reason.
The scenes with Billi and Nana are more tender, as if maybe Billi can forget for a moment that her grandmother is dying, than the family scenes, where she and her parents keep switching to English to talk about the propriety of the ongoing lie, which also gives the film some needed contrast. I expected more of a one-note story, yet The Farewell is anything but, especially avoiding the trap of simply making Billi the heroine whose position is right and thus for whom you’ll root in every argument. (You will sometimes, though.) Rather than burdening the script with major subplots, writer-director Lulu Wang, who based the story on her own experience with her family and her own grandmother, adds small flourishes to flesh out the main story. The best of these lets Nana’s sister tell her own story, explaining her role in the family, which gets exactly the screen time it needs without becoming a needless, ongoing plot point.
Awkwafina’s win might be the boost she needs to get an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress this year, which would be great news as I don’t think I’d put more than one performance over hers of what I’ve seen (Scarlett Johanssen in Marriage Story, although she has less to do overall). It seems like it would be an upset for The Farewell to get a Best Picture nod, but I’ll be pulling for it – and GoldDerby.com‘s Oscar odds page has this fifth in Best Screenplay and even has Zhao Shuzhen, who plays Nana, ranked 6th among candidates for the Best Supporting Actress award. (She’s very good.) It’s a good movie, maybe a little insubstantial to say it’s a great movie, but a movie I’ll root for next month, and one I’ll encourage a lot of people to see because almost anyone could watch this movie. It’s a very human story, simply told, without distractions or things to deter anyone from enjoying it.