Scarlett Worthington’s review published on Letterboxd:
“The first time I held your hand... we were at a railroad crossing, going to the movies. I reached for you, ashamed of my sweaty palm. Now, I’m holding your hand again only it’s a different place... a different time... a different age.”
Yi Yi tells the story of a dysfunctional family (that feels like an understatement but not in the way you expect) and follows each member as they are faced with the Grandmother of the family laying in a coma. We see them go though hardships and self discoveries, all whilst just going about in their everyday lives.
I think I do slightly prefer A Brighter Summer Day to this film, but I hold them both on the same level and quality. I’m absolutely in love with how Edward Yang uses a combination of wide and long shots as they’re the main reason as to how he just nails showing you only just about what you need to see in order to fathom what is going on. This just makes you feel entangled in the lives of the characters and I think it’s brilliant. He’s great at capturing the painstaking elements of life and his script is a major factor in that, I’m in love with the language, I don’t know if it’s scripted or improvised but either way it’s so effective to the plot.
[Very minor spoilers ahead]
An epic drama as a well as a film you experience more so than simply watch. It took until about the hour mark for me to really feel invested in what was being shown. This specific moment was the scene where TJ calls his ex lover and that scene just really pulled me in with how raw and real it felt. Everything else that then followed felt like it was in that same level of rawness and led me to just be emotionally invested for the rest of the film. Yi Yi is not so much a portrait of a family when they are faced with a looming tragedy but a portrait of individuals when they are faced with something that makes them reconsider themselves and their own lives’. Technically the well being of the Grandma of the family frames the story, but there are so many instances where the trials and experiences of the other members of the family feel as if they are at the forefront of the story, until you then jump to another character. However, this film does now answer major philosophical or spiritual questions or display the real meaning of family or anything else other than the simple conflict of reality. But it doesn’t seem so simple, it seems hard and frustrating and draining but then again that’s what comes along with life. Yi Yi exemplifies this explicably so as we are forced to experience union, uncertainty, life and death; things we have to take some part of a lifetime to fully experience we have to go through all within the space of 174 minutes and that is why I think Yi Yi is an absolute masterpiece.
