Yi Yi poster & wallpaper

Elaine Jin, Hsi-Sheng Chen, Issei Ogata

NJ Jian, his wife Min-Min and their two kids are a typical middle-class family, sharing their Taipei apartment with Min-Min's elderly other. Now in his mid-forties, NJ is a partner in a computer hard...( read more  read more... )ware firm which made big profits but will go bankrupt soon if it doesn't change direction. NJ warms to the idea of teaming up with Ota, an innovative designer of games software in Japan, and enjoys spending time with the charming and urbane Japanese man. Things start to go wrong for the Jians on the day that Min-Min's brother A-Di gets married - Min-Min's mother suffers a stroke and falls into a coma, and NJ bumps into Sherry, his first childhood sweetheart, a woman (now married to an American) he hasn't seen for twenty years. In the following weeks, Min-Min will breakdown and disappear to a religious retreat, her daughter Ting-Ting will get her first rough lessons in love, her son Yang-Yang will get into trouble at school and her brother A-Di will have to deal with a clash between the bride he chose and the woman he spurned. There will be an ugly murder in the apartment block where the Jians live; a young man will give in to his sense that life is inherently unfair and cruel and commit a crime which will ruin his own life. NJ will go to Tokyo to negotiate with Ota - but also to secretly meet Sherry and find out if life can really give him a second chance.

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93% liked it

5,658 ratings

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96% liked it

75 critics

Unrated, 2 hrs. 53 min.

Directed by: Edward Yang

Release Date: October 6, 2000

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DVD Release Date: May 8, 2001

Stats: 449 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (449)

  • rebvodka042099
    July 26, 2008
    rebvodka042099
    Humanity and simplicity. All a film wants.
  • EarthlyAlien
    March 8, 2008
    EarthlyAlien
    IN MEMORY OF EDWARD YANG (1947 - 2007)

    Photobucket

    Edward Ya...( read more)ng had been making films for nearly twenty years at the time that Yi yi took the world by storm in 2000, but most of his work had slipped under the radar of Western critics. Yi yi was the first of Yang's films to be distributed in the West, though some of his earlier works screened by the art house circuit included That Day, on the Beach, Taipei Story, The Terrorizers, A Brighter Summer Day, A Confucian Confusion, and Mahjong.

    Yang was born in Shanghai but grew up in Taipei. He spent time in America, attending a semester and working as a systems designer in Seattle before turning to filmmaking. It is not surprising, therefore, that Yi yi is full of Western-friendly references (such as McDonalds, Batman and Mickey Mouse) as well as situated in a busy urban center not terribly unlike American cities. Yi yi's international acclaim can be seen in the flood of awards it won: Best Director at Cannes (turning Yang into the first Taiwanese and second Chinese - after Wong Kar-wai - to win such award). It was also voted the Best Foreign Film of 2000 by both the New York and Los Angeles Critics Circles in a year in which Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was also in the running. Most surprising of all, however, was its selection as the best film of the year by the National Society of Film Critics, making it the first non-English language film ever picked by that group for its top award.

    Yang's portrait of a modern-day Taipei family builds so gradually you probably won't realize it's a near-masterpiece until it's over, but there are hints along the way. A chance encounter with a long-lost love precipitates a crisis of faith in a middle-aged businessman and father of two: Faith in his marriage, his job and the assurance that he's made the right life choices. Leaving an elevator at his brother-in-law's wedding banquet, emotionally remote NJ Jian (Wu Nienjen) runs into Sherry (Ke Suyun), the girl he once loved but abandoned, and the source of his deepest regret. What if he hadn't stood her up that night? Through a series of circumstances, NJ gets a chance to find out; his mother-in-law (Tang Ruyun) suffers a stroke and slips into a coma, leading his wife Min-Min (Elaine Jin) to confess her own deep unhappiness and decamp to a temple retreat. Meanwhile, the once-successful firm NJ works for sends him to Japan to woo a computer-game developer named Mr. Ota (Issey Ogata) while engaging a Chinese company to knock off his software. NJ has serious reservations about such dishonorable treatment of an honorable man, but agrees to go and arranges to meet Sherry in Tokyo.

    From the title (which roughly translates as "One One") and characters names to the way cinematographer Yang Weihan captures their most introspective moments, Yang's film is structured around reflections, and the strongest parts of this remarkable film involve NJ's children whose lives echo their father's. NJ's teenage daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee) is getting her first lessons in love, guilt and heartache, while the adorable 8-year-old Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang), in the process of falling in love for the first time, is realizing that nothing about life really makes much sense.

    Yi yi has all the pleasures of the best ensemble pieces - the interactions of a large cast, delineating their personalities, their lives, their hopes and their ambitions, and bringing them together in all their contradictions and conflicts, working with each other and against each other. In this alone there is enough in Yi yi to make a fascinating and quite brilliant film, but it also manages to say so much about the everyday lives and realities of middle-class people living in Taipei - it's about city life, the conditions of family life there, the expectations for education, employment, leisure and their outlook, being part of a country that continues to grow as one of the major competitors on the world commerce market.

    The real mystery of Yi yi lies in how such a deceptively simple film - less a story than a collection of acutely observed moments - achieves full-scale lightness. At just seven minutes short of three hours (a running time that flies by), Yi yi is the length usually reserved for epics, and yet the feel of the film is never less than intimate and honest. It encompasses life's primal passages - birth and death, youthful optimism and middle-aged regret - and its characters are engaged in the terrifying prospect of questioning the seemingly unshakable foundations of their lives. Yang never strains for profundity.

    Yi yi is quietly overwhelming, but it's restorative and strangely hopeful rather than devastating. Yang had the rare and magic ability of allowing us to savor the texture and weight of the moments that slide by us hour after hour, day after day without ever becoming ponderous or boring. And so when we reach the end of the film, it feels as if we've been modestly presented with what turns out to be a precious gift. This exquisitely crafted film moves slowly but it's never dull. And though elegant medium and long shots predominate, it's both warm and intimate. Rather than creating a sense of remoteness, the camera's distance from the action allows it to take everything in - life, death and the confusing mess in between.

    One of the reasons why Yi yi is so refreshing and genuine is that it doesn't subscribe to the lie that dysfunction is the norm. Films need some conflict to get our attention, but sometimes I get the feeling that the people who've made certain films think that the more screwed-up the characters, the truer they are. The characters in Yi yi are average people at a crossroads who are suddenly face to face with the ways in which their lives have let them down.

    Most of the crises that force us to face where our lives have led us are things that nearly everyone goes through - a parent's illness, a job that seems like a dead end, a day-to-day routine that suddenly seems purposeless. And Yi yi is all the more true and poignant because we recognize that the younger characters, like Ting-Ting beginning a tentative romance that could threaten her friendship with the new schoolmate who's moved in next door or Yang-Yang being made the butt of a bully teacher's piddling little shows of power, still have these adult crises ahead of them, even though their own troubles seem earthshaking.

    The real beauty of Yi yi however, is that neither the characters nor the plot can be easily summarised or encapsulated in a few paragraphs. I could stay here all night writting and I still wouldn't be able to describe a quarter of this film's resplendence and what it meant to me. Resting somewhere between the astute profundity of Wong Kar-wai and the heartfelt domestic dramas that made Ang Lee famous at home and abroad, Yi yi is a brilliant blend of bathos and pathos, of comedy and melancholy, that resonates the agony of everyday life, while offering up some answers and a glimmer of hope for the future. Watching this film will make you a better human being.
  • MovieGeek13
    March 16, 2007
    MovieGeek13
    This is cinema. Capturing life not through a series of orchestrated plots, but through characters just being and living.
  • columbiatch
    February 3, 2007
    columbiatch
    a one and a two... Not your typical dysfunctional family story. In fact this is a very honest portrayal of modern taiwanese middle-class family life. The characters all feel real and complex. There is no unnesessary melodrama that plague movies like American Beauty. Y...( read more)et it manages to encompass every aspect and emotion of life.
  • Phonex
    November 3, 2009
    Phonex
    the film is excellent. E.Yang has been establishing a spiritual contact with the meaning of life for 3 hours. Beginning is too noisy. Then you get calmness and tranquility when u are searching your past. There is nothing to regret.
  • hildalau30
    August 24, 2009
    hildalau30
    one and two this little boy was funny and reminded me of how life is short and should live it to the fullest. His speech at the end to his grandmother was was amazing. I like how when he finally had something to say to her well it was very profound.
  • ralch
    July 21, 2009
    ralch
    LETTERBOX. Muy hermosa. Sus revelaciones ocurren con una simpleza y un naturalismo admirables. / Quite beautiful. Its revelations occur with admirable simplicity and naturalism.
  • georgej20088
    June 2, 2009
    georgej20088
    Great long movie, a little bit of everything, thinking movie and family relationships... Japanese view...
  • salianom
    May 25, 2009
    salianom
    well i have the dvd, but without the subtitle. waaaaakkk...
  • jmankas
    February 22, 2009
    jmankas
    nice, simple and easy to follow introspective story about life at its different stages...

View All Yi Yi Reviews

Critic Reviews

May 8, 2001
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

A marvel of delicacy and humor. full review

March 2, 2001
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Only rarely is a film this observant and tender about the ups and downs of daily existence. full review

January 10, 2001
A.O. Scott, The New York Times

As I watched the final credits of Yi Yi through bleary eyes, I struggled to identify the overpowering feeling that was making me tear up. Was it grief? Joy? Mirth? Yes, I decided, it was all of these.... full review

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