YI YI (A One and a Two)
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Winstar Cinema Director: Edward Yang Writer: Edward Wang Cast: Wu Nien-jen, Elaine Jin, Issey Ogata, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Chen Hsi-sheng, Ko Su-yun, Michael Tao, Hsiao Shu-shen, Adrian Lin, Yu-pang Chang, Tang Ru-yun, Hsu Shu-yuan, Tseng Hsin-yi.
The pleonastic title of this Taiwanese film reminds me of a play by August Wilson that was staged off-Broadway some time ago, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"--about the exploitation of black musicians by white music producers. Throughout the play, the lead musician opened each number with "A one, and a two, and y'all know what to do." The director of "Yi Yi," who, by the way, garnered the well-deserved best director award at the last Cannes Film Festival, stated in an interview that the title serves double-duty (evidently enough). While "Yi Yi" literally means "one one," or "individually," a looser translation is "a one and a two," the typical introduction to jazz numbers--signifying here that nothing really serious is going down. In fact, what stands out from the direction of this family saga is director Edward Yang's taking a complex, generational family story which, if directed in the U.S., would come out something like George Stevens' "Giant," serving it to us as though the narrative really deals with only one or two people. Wang is like the shortstop at Wrigley Field who makes a complex double-play seem like second nature, requiring no effort at all.
Patience, viewers. During the first half hour, Wang throws a stack of characters at us that could make you think that heavy going's ahead. How is he going to sort out this pot pourri so that we absorb the characteristics of each person, and then again, is this going to be one of those avant-garde works that will continue through its almost three-hour length like a loosely structured Robert Altman movie? Not at all.
There is a genuine focus and a sincere theme to the whole tale. The central figure, known as NJ (Nien-Jen Wu) because people in the computer industry get American-style nicknames, is undergoing a mid-life crisis, or more accurately, a malaise. In his mid-forties he is worried. He is beginning to wonder whether he has made mistakes early in life that messed him up to such an extent that he will never be able to retrieve the essence he probably sought as a teenager. NJ is a partner with a reasonably successful computer firm that may go bottoms-up because it is not keeping up with the times. He needs to support his wife, Min-min (Elaine Jin), his teenage daughter Ting-ting (Kelly) and his eight-year-old lad Yang-yang (Jonathan Chang). (The duplication of names is further evidence that no matter how heavy the going, Wang does not intend for us to take his story too seriously.) Because NJ looks honest, he is asked to negotiate a deal with a Japanese designer, Ota (Issey Ogata)--but at a bad time. His mother-in-law (Tang Ru-yun) is in a coma and not expected to live; his teen is involved in her first love affair with a skinny kid named Fatty (Pung Chang Yu), and he has just run into an old sweetheart, Sherry (Ko Su-yun) whom he had stood up some twenty years ago, arranges secretly to travel with her to Japan, and ponders a new life with this woman who still wails about his leaving her in the lurch.
The central narrative in itself may be nothing huge to write home about, but Mr. Yang's power is in his close observation of details. He patiently holds several visuals for a minute or more to give us in the audience a brief break between dramatic scenes but more important to emphasize images of high emotion to the characters. He points out to the pride of his U.S. audience the hold that American culture has on the Taiwanese, shown by the Batman and Robin poster on the eight-year-old's wall and the H&H (New York) bagels shop to which the teens repair on dates if they have not already booked tables at McDonald's. Carefully foreshadowing items that will assume importance later on, he has his A-1 cinematographer Yang Wei-han capture the beauties of nature, particularly the cloud formations that come crashing together yielding thunder and lightning--as though to show that in life, the loveliness and the tempests are intertwined. Opening on a scene involving the wedding of NJ's brother-in- law A-Di (Chen Hsi-sheng) and his pregnant partner Hsiao Yen (Hsiao Shu-shen), Wang demonstrates how the Taiwanese are at least as boisterous as any in a similar situation in the U.S. when the drinks are freely flowing.
Of particular charm is the dialogue conducted in English between the Japanese game designer and NJ as they meet first in Taipei and then in Tokyo, the clever Japanese in effect taking the role of a guru to NJ in much the way that a spiritual leader comforts NJ's wife after she has had a minor breakdown.
Despite the frequent loitering visuals and the occasional monologue, "Yi Yi" moves smoothly along, and though we can guess the fate of the comatose grandmother, Wang throws in a smart twist involving NJ's business that, together with the get-togethers and break-ups of the individuals speaks volumes about the ways we are regularly betrayed and seem never to learn from our miscalculations. Dialogue is in Mandarin, Hokkien and English with English subtitles.
Not Rated. Running time: 173 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews