Yi Yi
(Yi Yi)

By showing people who are on the threshold of what existence offers them in the way of opportunities to pass through a door and take another path, Yi Yi casts an exceptionally profound look at the cultural and social entropy that hems them in. The great Edward Yang’s final crossing to the other side of appearances at first seems to display considerable formal restraint, as if the family chronicle that it constantly follows
should in no way be hobbled by its author. With this as a starting point, the filmmaker’s genius lies precisely in the way he captures the story in the diversity of its sometimes secret movements and the variability of its rhythms, as well as its repetitions. We watch it as if we were listening to music: lives made up of counterpoints, loops, dramatic shifts in tone, turmoil and lapses of memory. JB