Yi Yi

Directed by Edward Yang
Written by Edward Yang
Starring Nien-Jen Wu, Kelly Lee, Issey Ogata, Jonathan Chang, Elaine Jin
Taiwan, 2000
Not Rated

B+

LIFE
Yi Yi is a Taiwanese film somewhat related to the human crisscrossings of Robert Altman and his followers, and to American cinema’s recent, strange fondness and self-congratulation for deriding suburbia. However, it is certainly not as over-the-top as the high-strung, self-mocking ensemble piece Magnolia, and it has a warmth that was absent from Altman’s epic and influential Nashville. Also, it is undoubtedly truer than the cartoonish American Beauty and the frigid Ice Storm, both of which are excellent movies that, nevertheless, seem to be accusing all suburbanites of being hypocritical and emotionally dead. Edward Yang, the film’s writer-director (whose earlier works are praised as masterpieces but have yet to be seen by most American audiences), has made an eloquent movie that comes closer than anything I’ve seen in the last few years to an honest, rounded portrait of the average dysfunctional family, which is to say most, or, dare I say, all families. The Jians, who are at the center of the film, are dysfunctional, but in a way that is complex instead of outrageously simplistic.

Of course, there is no such thing as the quintessential example of uncomfortable home life, but Yi Yi doesn’t aim for that anyway. It is built with specificity but turns out to be universal. The Jians’ troubles crawl out from under the rug when the grandmother goes into a coma. The doctor suggests that each family member take turns trying to revive her by telling her what’s going on in their lives. The mother, Min-Min (a character who is underused, but beautifully played by Elaine Jin), has a little nervous breakdown when she discovers that her life has little substance and is the same boring day-in-day-out cycle. The safety net of home and family breaks when you have to face yourself. She goes off to a mountain with her guru to get in touch with her spiritual side, leaving her distant husband N.J. (Nien-Jen Wu) to take care of his failing business and two kids, daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee) and son Yang Yang (Jonathan Chang).

The film is frequently heartbreaking and often exquisite, sometimes in a very unsettling way. N.J. meets his first love, Sherry (Su-Yun Ko), early in the film during his brother-in-law’s wedding. They have not seen each other in thirty years and their first encounter in the movie is a wrenching moment, going from surprise and uncertainty to frustration and anger. Later, the two decide to meet during N.J.’s business trip to Japan. This is paired with Ting-Ting’s date with her neighbor’s troubled boyfriend back in Taipei for the film’s most moving sequence. Particularly affecting is a scene in which both N.J. and Sherry exchange cathartic confessions of the hard road they have traveled since their relationship ended three decades ago. Both of them weep furiously when they share their side of the story, demanding to know how the other could have been so cruel, yet they cannot bring themselves to cry for the other. Back in Taipei, Ting-Ting falls in love with the sullen boy, echoing her father’s reminiscences of his past love for Sherry. In another scene, the two dissatisfied adults talk about getting back together again, knowing the hopelessness of their relationship. The comparisons of the two generations did come across as clichéd, but Yang’s construction of the sequence and the honest performances has kept that section of the film in my head a week later. Parents cannot shield their children from the shock of growing up, or stop them from stumbling the way they did, just as they cannot erase past mistakes and change the outcome of their lives.

Yi Yi tells us about the way humans function, but, seeing it in America, it also might indirectly tell us about what Americans think of the outside world. During the first hour of the movie, there was laughter among the audience whenever there was a reference to western culture. In a very early scene, Yang Yang eats in a McDonald’s completely populated by Chinese people. Later on, someone mentions Yahoo and AOL. Ting-Ting plays a George Gershwin piece and the cover of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night album is framed on the Jians’ apartment wall. The fact that any of this is remotely funny or worthy of attention must say something about what American’s think about foreign countries, or at least about the idea people in my city get about the East. Somewhere along the line, N.J. finds a friend in a Japanese video game designer named Mr. Ota (Issey Ogata), and some people were initially confused as to why these two Asian men were communicating in English. Does everyone assume that all Asians share the same language? Do people really think that Asia is all poverty and tiny villages? Yang seems to be chuckling at these notions and depicting a modern Taiwan affected by the shrinking of the world and rampant technology (he wittily sneaks in a couple of Buddhist monks with cell phones).

The focus of Yi Yi still remains on family instead of international or national affairs, but perhaps it is saying to us that, as the globe seems to be getting smaller, families are drifting further and further apart. It is never made clear whether N.J. really loves his wife, or if he loves his children at all; in fact, he seems detached from them most of the time. The film is an assortment of these little regrets and comic blunders that make up our lives, all seen through Yang’s sedate and wandering eyes and Wei-han Yang’s stunning cinematography. Some of the film’s most alarming shots are of the lonely, lit-up city, and Yang uses the windows of buildings like canvases, painting layer upon layer of reality with multiple reflections.

Also, he opts to watch several scenes from afar. Critic Mike D’Angelo suggested that this might be Yang’s way of avoiding sentimentality, and a few of his visual tricks do come across as passé. The film never does escape being melodramatic, and this is no flaw, though some of the plot developments are too convenient and the film’s ending felt overly reminiscent of Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, a film that revolves around aging parents and their indifferent children. Yi Yi has a placid quality like Tokyo Story because its point of view is objective and its tone nonjudgmental, but there is a lot going on in the film, and it’s never boring. The missteps are distracting and disappointing, but the most beautiful moments in the film’s quick three hours are soap opera and truth unadulterated. There’s a lot of crying going on in this film, and these people have a right to cry; this is a time when it seems no one is forced to repress their feelings, and here is a movie where people have done it, regretted it, and ended up living with it and dealing with disappointment. Yi Yi is a soap opera, but it is rarely manipulative and its melodramatic tendencies are not altogether unrealistic. After all, we often turn our own lives into weepies; ridiculous sorrow is part of being human. Yang has crammed so much life into every corner of this film, yet it runs smoothly, utterly modest on the surface. His melodrama isn’t thrown at us just for kicks, but to hold up a photograph of ourselves showing the side of the truth that is often elusive- an objective look at our relationships with those closest to us that is detailed and intimate.

By Andrew Chan [MARCH 24, 2001]