Last May, I sat down with Lulu Wang to talk about her sophomore film slash Sundance darling, The Farewell, one of the best movies I’ve seen so far in 2019. I could talk to you about what we talked about, but then you wouldn’t read the article. Suffice to say, the experience taught me a valuable lesson that I will now share to all men: If you interview women, talk to them about craft instead of gender dynamics in the industry, and if you interview men, do the opposite. It’s good practice. I can’t say with certainty, but I strongly suspect that female directors get real tired real fast of folks asking them the same damn questions about being a woman in movies*.
Anyways. I sorely wish I’d made time to write a comparison piece between The Farewell and The Wedding Banquet, one of Ang Lee’s more unsung (but absolutely superb) films; they share some common plot DNA that’d make for interesting side-by-side discussion. Alas. All I have is this absolutely delightful chat with Wang.
You can read the whole conversation over at Paste Magazine.
*Disclosure: I still ask those questions every now and again. But they’re always secondary to greater questions about filmmaking.
A Constant Visual Feast 