YI YI (A ONE AND A TWO) -----------------------
Winner of the Best Director award at this year's Cannes Film Festival, "Yi Yi (A One and a Two)" is a broad, philosophical look at modern life in Taiwan. NJ (Nien-Jen Wu, writer/director of "A Borrowed Life") is a middle aged father of two who's facing a crisis at his electronics firm and the unsettling appearance of an old flame (Su-Yun Ko) while his wife Min Min (Elaine Jin, "A Brighter Summer Day") suffers a breakdown. His teenage daughter Ting Ting (Kelly Lee) is involved in a love triangle complicated by musical competition with her best friend. Eight year old Yang Yang (Jonathan Chang) has an unrequited crush and a budding passion for photography. NJ's live-in mother-in-law (Ru-Yun Tang) is dying and his brother-in-law Ah Di (Hsi-Sheng Chen) is still being pursued by his old girfriend even though he's newly married to an expectant bride.
LAURA:
Writer/director Edward Yang's ("A Brighter Summer Day") "Yi Yi" is one of the year 2000's most satisfying films on many levels. The story, while playing like a soap opera on the surface, is chock full of wry human observations while showing great affection for its characters. Technically, the film is striking in every aspect.
Nien-Jen Wu gives a note perfect performance as the beleaguered NJ. With little dialogue, Wu is always sympathetic as his character provides an anchor for the confused adults who orbit around him. NJ himself is only able to turn to Ota (Issey Ogata), the Japanese businessman NJ wishes to partner with. Ota looks like the makings of a long time friend and provides much needed advice cloaked in metaphor. The other anchor in "Yi Yi" is the dying grandmother, another character of few words. Min Min believes her life is empty after realizing that she tells her mother the same things daily and it 'only takes a minute' while Ting Ting obsesses over the drama in her life. In the film's opening scene, Ah Di's old girlfriend 'apologizes' to the grandmother at the wedding reception hall for not marrying her son. Young Yang Yang waits for the film's closing funeral to speak his oddly mature and though-proking piece.
Every woman in the film has her moment of hysterics except for grandma and the moody, melancholy Ting Ting, who is at the receiving end of her best friend's condemnation for seeing her boyfriend, Fatty (Pang Chang Yu). Sherry, NJ's former fiance now married for the third time to an American in Chicago, arranges to meet him on a business trip to Tokyo obviously hoping to resume the relationship only to spend the weekend haranguing him for abandoning her all those years ago. Most of the film's gentle humor comes via Yang Yang whether he's arriving home drenched and unnoticed or patiently explaining to his uncle Ah Di that he's taken pictures of the backs of peoples' heads as a service because they can't seem them themselves.
Yang and his cinematographer Wei-han Yang have created a bold color design which shifts from reds (Ah Di's wedding), to yellows (Ting Ting's first love) and blues (NJ's Tokyo interlude) before finally giving over to black and white (grandmother's funeral). Characters are framed in storefronts, by pillars, trees and doorways and reflected upon by the outside world. The film's editor, Bo-Wen Chen, expertly cuts among all the interweaving plot threads, never more beautifully than when Sherry describes her and NJ's first date as Ting Ting repeats the action in another time zone. Kai-Li Peng's score subtly creates mood.
While not every character's story line is as compelling as the others, such is the way of life, and life is celebrated in all its glories, tragedies, foolishness and profundity in "Yi Yi."
A
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