You can usually count on A24 to deliver high-quality films (though not quite always). They’ve also been one of the key movie distributors to ignite the careers of many young and talented new filmmakers. Coming up this year is “The Farewell,” written and directed by Lulu Wang who, judging from the glowing early reviews from Sundance earlier this year, and this enticing new trailer, may likely be another big filmmaker to emerge from this high-priced distributer.
Starring Awkwafina in the lead, here’s what’s known about the story so far: When they discover their beloved Grandmother has only a short while left to live, her family decides to keep her in the dark and schedule an impromptu wedding to gather before she passes. Billi, feeling like a fish out of water in her home country of America, struggles with the family’s decision to hide the truth from her grandmother and decides to travel to China to see her, despite the objections of her parents.
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Based heavily on her own experience as someone born in China and now living in America, as well as her own grandmother’s illness, Wang states that “I always felt the divide in my relationship to my family versus my relationship to my classmates and to my colleagues and to the world that I inhabit. That’s just the nature of being an immigrant and straddling two cultures.”
Scheduled for release in the middle of summer (for the Northern Hemisphere folks), it’s been doing good business with critics so far, holding a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes from 33 reviews, as well as 87 on Metacritic from 11 reviews. Following from her obscure 2014 directorial debut “Posthumous,” it’s safe to say her sophomore effort is going to be the film to likely kick-start this new talent.
“The Farewell” is released in cinemas on July 12 by good old A24.
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