Yi Yi - A One and a Two (Japan, Taiwan, 2000)
Original version with subtitles
Directed by: Edward Yang
Age rating: 6
Running time: 2 hours 53 minutes
A late masterpiece of the Taiwanese ‘New Wave’ of the 1980s and 1990s, presented in a freshly restored version. Through the slow unfolding of the story and the interwoven narrative threads of family conflicts, a multi-voiced, intimate chronicle emerges, told with great precision.
NJ Jian, his wife Min-Min and their two children are a typical middle-class family who share their flat in Taipei with Min-Min’s elderly mother. NJ is a partner in a computer hardware firm that made substantial profits last year but will soon go bankrupt unless it changes course. He is taken with the idea of joining forces with an innovative games software developer from Japan and enjoys spending time with the charming and sophisticated Japanese man. For the Jians, things begin to go downhill on the day Min-Min’s brother A-Di gets married. On that day, Min-Min’s mother suffers a stroke and is taken to hospital in a coma.
Edward Yang paints a portrait of a middle-class Taiwanese family as a reflection on responsibility, loss and transience. The narrative weaves together the personal and the broader picture, the intimate and societal changes, without moralising. Moments of humour and silence stand on an equal footing with existential insights. What remains in the end is a sense of melancholy and comfort. YI YI has just been included by the New York Times in its list of the 100 best films of the 21st century.
