Romancefest 2021: Yi Yi

Written and Directed by Edward Yang

Starring Wu Nien-jen, Elaine Jin, Issey Ogata, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Hsi-Sheng Chen, Su-Yun Ko and Lawrence Ko

Taiwan, Japan, 2000

I already wrote this year about how writer/director Edward Yang is one of the greatest gifts Romancefest has ever given me. Since A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY was the kind of movie I wished would never end, I was delighted to find the next movie on the list was another of his works, Cannes-winner YI YI. I never wanted it to end either!

This film tells the story of a family and their neighbors, all experiencing some sort of dissatisfaction with their lives. The characters range from elderly to elementary school aged and the scope of events in the movie ranges from weddings to funerals. It's about a very specific group of people, but it is also all encompassing, universal and a strong portrait of what it means to be human.

The father of the central family is dissatisfied with the direction his job is going, and attempts to court business from an idealistic Japanese client who he grows to respect and admire. Unfortunately his co-workers seem to undermine him at every turn. In the mean time, he's also rekindling a relationship with an old girlfriend.

His wife feels empty, spiritually, after her mother (who lives with the family) has a stroke and goes into a coma. Is this all there is, she wonders? In an attempt to find out, she gets sucked into what seems to be a cult, but most of that is seen off screen and only implied.

The high school aged daughter feels guilty about the grandmother because she suspects the grandmother was attempting to take out the trash, a chore she neglected, when the stroke hit. She forms a friendship with the neighbor girl and becomes a go-between, passing notes between the neighbor and her boyfriend, and eventually becoming involved in what turns out to be a dangerous love triangle.

My favorite character, the elementary school aged son, is teased and picked on at school and at home, and quietly takes on his own projects like learning to swim or taking up photography right under the family's noses without them really noticing. He develops a crush on a girl at school, and becomes philosophically obsessed with the concept that people miss half their lives, because they can never see what's behind them.

There's also the neighbor's mother and her relationships, the mother's brother and his troubled marriage and money problems, and all kinds of other stuff. The movie's scope is epic, even though the stories are intimate, just like A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY. The main difference here, between the two movies, I think, is that A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY infuses this epic scope/intimate story format with the political and historical details of a specific time and place. YI YI goes the other direction and is infused with the big universal questions of life, the universe and everything.

This is another masterpiece and sadly Yang's last film. As I understand it, he began his struggle with cancer shortly after this film was made and eventually died a few years later. It's a shame he isn't out there making movies right now, but he has left an awesome legacy that I can only see growing ever more important as more people discover his work.

If it feels like I'm laying it on thick about how great this guy is, good.