Abdulla Alsaleh’s review published on Letterboxd:
To say that Yi Yi is about life and death is both an overstatement and an understatement. While it isn’t entirely about those two things, it is about the fear of dying and the fear of living, as well as our struggle to comprehend both of these things. This attempt to understand life and death is seen through the eyes of the Jian family, and the use of multiple perspectives really does add a lot to the movie.
Yi Yi’s prioritization of characters and emotions over plot makes Yi Yi feel less like a scripted and acted movie and more like you are watching an actual family, and it works incredibly well. At times, Yi Yi does feel a bit messy with its lack of plot, but it works very well for the most part. I loved Yi Yi a lot, and I am really excited to see more movies from Edward Yang‘s filmography.
