Other Titles • Yi yi: A One and a Two... (2000) • Yi yi • Yan Yan - Natsu no omoide (2000) • A One And A Two
Synopses for Yi yi: A One and a Two... (2000)
1.
A wedding and a grandmother's illness reveal fault lines in the lives of one Taipei family in Edward Yang's extraordinary film. Yi Yi is built from deceptively simple elements that together create a complex, warm, and utterly convincing portrait of family life. NJ Jian is a businessman facing bankruptcy, but he has to juggle his financial problems with family strife when his mother-in-law falls into a coma. NJ's wife, Min-Min, brings her mother home, and each family member--including daughter Ting-Ting and her delightful little brother Yang-Yang--spends hours talking to the old lady. These conversations become confessionals and the characters gradually re-evaluate their relationships. There are no catastrophic conflicts, only the ordinary, sometimes troubled, unfolding of lives. Yang enhances the film's sense of reality by frequently holding the camera back from the action. The use of long shots and unexpected angles makes it seem like the audience is eavesdropping, catching glimpses of lives passing by. Yi Yi is almost three hours long, but it flies by. Yang is both a consummate, restrained technician and a subtle director of actors. The combination is a magical one. --Simon Leake
2.
Focusing on a typical family--parents, two children, and an elderly grandmother--living in a small apartment in Taipei, YI YI (A ONE AND A TWO) is about the patterns of daily life. It includes a wedding, a funeral, a first date, a last date, a birth, and a death. The film follows each member of the Jian family carefully, giving each one equal time, completely developing each character. NJ (Wu Nienjen), the father of the family, struggles with a dead-end job at a technology firm while reexamining his marriage when he meets his high school sweetheart, Sherry (Ke Suyun), after 30 years. NJ's teenage daughter, Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee), has a selfless demeanor and a naive interest in everything, which diffuses the complexity of her high school life. Her little brother, Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang), is an adorable five-year-old troublemaker who's in love with a pesky girl in his class. And Yang-Yang's mother, Min-Min (Elaine Jin), grieves for her dying mother (Tang Runyun) while coping with her own middle age in a rapidly maturing family.
Edward Yang, director of 1991's A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY, presents a careful, direct, meticulously photographed film with YI YI. Brassy shots of Taipei reflected in the windows of a moving car are offset with slow choreographed sequences using the streetlights to narrate little moral tales. Perhaps the most powerful gem in this film is the magical character of Mr. Ota (Issey Ogata), NJ's Japanese business associate, whose optimistic life perspective will inspire and delight YI YI's viewers.
3.
"Two Big Thumbs Up!" -Ebert & Roeper and the Movies
Edward Yang's award-winning masterpiece follows the lives of NJ Jian, his wife, Min-Min, and their two kids who share their Taipei apartment with Min-Min's elderly mother. Now in his mid forties, NJ is a partner in a computer hardware firm which made big profits last year but which will soon go bankrupt if it doesn't change direction. Things start to go wrong for the Jians one the day that Min-Min's brother A-Di gets married. That’s the day when Min-Min's mother suffers a stroke and is rushed to the hospital in a coma from which she may never awaken. It's also the day when NJ bumps into his childhood sweetheart, a woman (now married to an American) he hasn't seen for twenty years. In the following weeks, the entire family will have to re-evaluate who they are and what their lives have become.
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