Lulu Wang
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At Home With His Memories
In The Poetics of Space, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard writes about a simple psychological test used on children, “the house test.” He quotes the critic Anne Balif: “Asking a child to draw his house is asking him to reveal the deepest dream shelter he has found for his happiness. If he is happy, he will succeed in drawing a snug, protected house, which is well built on deeply-rooted foundations.” If he is sad, however, writes Bachelard, “The house bears traces of his distress.” For Bachelard, the home, and particularly the childhood home, is a place where “a great many […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Dec 15, 2023 -
The Kindest Denial
“Life is not just about what you do but how you do it,” says Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhou) to Billi (Awkwafina), her New York–based struggling writer granddaughter, toward the end of writer/director Lulu Wang’s triumphant sophomore feature, The Farewell. It’s the type of aphoristic advice passed on by an elder that, on its face, may not seem like much. But given where it’s placed in Wang’s film, after all that has come before and what Billi is certain will come after, it lands with disarming, laconic gravity. And as much as it subtly refers to the film’s central storyline—Billi travels […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 19, 2019 -
Where are the Girl-Wonders? Everywhere—But Who Noticed?
Since the late 1990s, Gas Food Lodging filmmaker Allison Anders frequently lamented the pitiful media attention around women directors. “There are no girl-wonders, especially in this business,” she told BOMB Magazine in 1994. “But men all think they’re the next boy-wonder.” In the wake of bombshell reports on gender pay inequity and the #TimesUp movement, the media and entertainment industries are now certainly well aware of the “boy wonder syndrome,” as it’s been called. But bias is still glaringly with us, sometimes in subtle ways. Not only were no women directors nominated for Oscars this year, as has been widely […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Feb 21, 2019 -
“To Revisit Such a Traumatic Experience for the Sake of Our Movie”: Director Lulu Wang | The Farewell
Whenever directors watch their own films, they always do so with the knowledge that there are moments that occurred during their production — whether that’s in the financing and development or shooting or post — that required incredible ingenuity, skill, planning or just plain luck, but whose difficulty is invisible to most spectators. These are the moments directors are often the most proud of, and that pride comes with the knowledge that no one on the outside could ever properly appreciate what went into them. So, we ask: “What hidden part of your film are you most privately proud of […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 25, 2019
