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IT’S not hard to see why Lulu Wang’s delightful and heartwarming culture-clash comedy-drama broke audience records on its release in the United States – where attendance figures outstripped the latest Avengers instalment.

Billi is a Chinese American very much at home in Brooklyn, a writer in her early 30s with not much in the way of cash or prospects. She has lived in the US since the age of 6 with her parents, but she has strong ties to her family in China, in particular her beloved grandmother (Nai Nai in her native Mandarin).

When the family discover that nai nai has cancer and is terminally ill, they decide that they must all travel back to say goodbye. The only catch is that according to Chinese custom, it is very bad form to tell an old person that they have cancer, in order to save them fear and distress. So, the family must come up with another reason to justify a huge gathering.

So it is decided that Billi’s cousin and his Japanese girlfriend – who have been half heartedly dating for only a couple of months – will be press ganged into a Big Family Wedding with all the trimmings that will provide the perfect cover for a farewell to Nai Nai. What could possibly go wrong? Billi has to navigate impossible cultural tensions: the tendency of her adopted country to be open about your feelings and talk it all out – a tendency that she has adopted herself – versus her family’s insistence that they must all put on a brave smiley face and hide their anguish, an insistence that Billi perceives as a cruel lie.

Ultimately, what must govern an individual’s actions? Does the imperative of individual emotions and feelings transcend the collective interests of a family and a community?

The story is based on the director’s own experience, a story she shared on New York public radio that she decided to develop into a screenplay. And this closeness to her heart comes across, with warmth and honesty and a great affinity with our heroine, Billi, helped by a standout performance from Awkwafina, who this week took home a Golden Globe for her efforts. The result is a bittersweet and poignant portrait of love and family ties, one of the best indy movies of 2019, that has had audiences laughing out loud and wiping away the odd tear in equal measure. Bring tissues.

The Farewell – Friday, January 17, 8 pm – Thame Players Theatre, Thame –  doors open 7.30pm – Licenced bar – Tickets HERE
USA 2019, 98 minutes, PG certificate –
Directed by Lulu Wang, Starring Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin, Jim Liu, Shuzhen Zhou, Gil Perez-Abraham – Trailer HERE

YOU don’t get hired here,” states Maloney (Ross Brewster), the hard-nosed delivery- depot boss in Ken Loach’s searing examination of zero-hours Britain, Sorry We Missed You.

“You come on board. We call it on-boarding. You don’t work for us – you work with us.” It’s a prime example of the doublespeak that underwrites today’s gig-economy culture, brilliantly captured by Paul Laverty’s justifiably embittered script. As sold to hard-grafting Ricky Turner (Kris Hitchen), it’s an opportunity to become ‘the master of your own destiny’ – a self-employed franchise-owner, freed from wage slavery (there are only ‘fees’) in a brave new world in which everything ‘is your choice’.

Yet despite Ricky’s determination to grab this opportunity and make it work for him and his family, he’s been sold a lie – all he’s really being freed from are basic workers’ rights. Before the drama is over, that hollow declaration of choice will come back to haunt Ricky, painfully revealed as nothing more than an enslaving illusion.

From the outset we know where this is going, as the costs immediately start piling up. First there’s the van, which requires a £1,000 deposit, raised by selling the car that Ricky’s wife, Abby (Debbie Honeywood), needs for her own work. She’s already overstretched – an agency care-worker in an uncaring world, shuttling endlessly between too-short appointments with the elderly and infirm, struggling to live up to her golden rule: “Treat them like your mam.” Then there are the costs of the job; the hundreds of pounds of fines incurred if Ricky doesn’t show up on time; the thousands he owes if he loses his parcels or his tracker. And then there is the cost to Ricky’s family life, as every hour is swallowed up with work, his teenaged son goes further off the rails, and his able but anxious daughter struggles to cope with the obvious struggles the family are facing.

As always with Loach and Laverty’s work, the devil is in the detail – those incidental elements that lend an unmistakable ring of truth to the wider drama. Whether it’s Ricky being given a bottle to piss in to save time on the road, or Abby dabbing camphor under her nostrils before entering a potentially pungent home, we believe in these characters and the situations in which they find themselves. This is powerfully real and heart-breaking drama from a director that demands we attend to the erosion of the standards we have all come to take for granted, but which are disappearing without us getting sufficiently angry about it. (Based on the review by Mark Kermode published in The Observer, 3.11.19, accessed 5.1.20) View the trailer HERE

Sorry We Missed You – Thame Players Theatre, Nelson Street, Thame – Sunday 12th of January, 7 pm – UK 2019, 101 minutes, 15 certificate
Directed by Ken Loach, Starring Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor, Mark Birch, Ross Brewster