'The Farewell' reaches out across East-West divide

The Farewell, which distributor A24 released in select theaters on Friday, stars Nora Lum－perhaps more widely known as rapper, Awkwafina－as Billi, a stand-in for Wang. One of the co-stars, Nai Nai's sister Hong Lu, plays herself. Several of the locations are where Wang's family drama actually played out. Wang's parents visited the set, as did (spoiler alert) the real Nai Nai, who at 86 has far outlived her original prognosis but remains in the dark about her family's 2013 scheme.

"She would come to the set but she didn't really know what we were doing so we had to kind of protect her," says Lum. "It was like The Farewell in real life."

"It was very meta," Wang admits.

As personal as The Farewell is to Wang, it has been deeply felt by a broad spectrum of viewers who see a reflection of the harmony and discord in their own families. Wang captures the tender, bittersweet relationship between Billi and her grandmother, and, with a wide lens, the celebrations and pains of the extended family. "I wanted to put the grief and the humor all in one frame," says Wang.

The movie has special resonance for many Asian Americans who see in The Farewell, not just the characters and faces seldom found on American screens, but a recognizable familial world that straddles borders. That's especially true for Lum, who was raised in Queens, New York, by her grandmother after her mother, a South Korean immigrant, died when she was 4.

"When the script came to me, it was called Grandma and it was about this very special relationship between a girl and her grandmother that I never thought I would see in a movie－especially one that was Asian American and so close to home," says Lum. "I had to do this for my grandmother."

This was before Lum's breakout performance in last year's Crazy Rich Asians, and Wang concedes that the rapper-comedian-influencer wasn't the obvious choice for such a dramatic role, but she was convinced by a self-recorded audition that Lum, who had to improve her Mandarin for the part, could skillfully render Billi's conflicted emotions with subtlety.

"I wanted the part so badly," says Lum. "I hired a voice coach and everything."

Lum's initial fears about things like crying on camera quickly receded once she was in China for the production.

"There's a lot of questions that come up when you do a movie like this about your own identity and going back home. What is home? Am I Asian there? Am I not Asian enough? Am I not American enough?" says Lum. "These are questions that every Asian American or any 'dash-American' struggles with their whole life."

Wang has witnessed the emotional responses engendered by her film. In one instance, she recalls seeing audience members hand tissues to a young, sobbing Asian American man.

"This is why we go to the movie theater. It's like a catharsis," says Wang. "That's kind of how I see the movie now. It's a communal grieving of both the actual people that we love and the places and ideas that we have to let go of."

That belief in the power of the theatrical experience might have had something to do with Wang's decision to accept A24's roughly $6 million offer for the film at Sundance even though Netflix offered her more than double that amount. As an American-Chinese coproduction, it means her film will also be released in China.