Edward Yang
Yi-Yi

Someone once said that since the advent of cinema, we live three times more, risking to multiply melancholies and solitudes, but also with the advantage of living more intensely in the short time we have left. Edward Yang created, with this "Yi-Yi" (Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival 2000) a cinematic world where it's easy to get lost. Despite its three-hour length, the film never manages to bore and what seems like an immense amount of time passes lightly. Why? Because it speaks of life, a subject with which all human beings are in contact. The viewer tiptoes into a wedding ceremony, feeling disoriented because they do not know any of those people, but as time passes, the viewer feels part of them and decides to continue watching their stories unfold. At each cinematic turn, there's a piece of life to savor: a solitude that lasts throughout the vital age, from childhood to old age, passing through adolescence and adulthood.

A man discovers that his agency is about to fail and allies with the rival company, the wife finds out on the luckiest day of the year that her mother is in a coma, the teenage daughter acts as a go-between for love letters between her best friend and her boyfriend, the young son, the most philosophical and silent, teased by his peers and targeted by overly strict teachers.

The most beautiful aspect of this film is that "Yi Yi" doesn't dare, doesn't show, and isn't in a hurry to reach conclusions: it simply observes, observing the movements of a normal family, which could be anyone's.

The ABC of existence is shown through simple actions: the discovery of adolescent love, childhood naivety, and the ambiguity of sex (the boy mistaking a condom for a balloon), the fear of life when it becomes difficult (the protagonist's brother's suicide). All to make us realize that it doesn't matter whether we're 10, 40, or 70 years old because, deep within our souls, we are all the same and all ask ourselves, in our way, if perhaps we deserve more.
And so we even complain about our own lives (the wife who grumbles that her days are all the same, not realizing that it was others who worried about everything for her), underestimating the potential of the younger humans (it will be the child, childhood, that summarizes the fears and hopes of all the devastated souls in a final sigh).

Life is also represented with a beautiful poetic vein (the child photographing people's backs to show them the part they cannot see) and with individuality (the very title is deliberately enigmatic: "Yi Yi," which in Chinese means "one one," a number, but also the identity of the soul).

A film with a double beauty, both inner and outer, that translates into cinema and life. The image is constructed as if drawn by a painter, the direction is clear and crystalline, expressive and wise, skillfully balancing close-ups, long shots, and handheld scenes, the skillful weaving of stories, which stories ultimately are not.

Because the strength of "Yi-Yi" lies precisely in the majestic and poetic juxtaposition of life's pieces, as if it were all a puzzle to be recomposed, where illusion is scattered in mirrors, life's difficulties allow us to recognize ourselves (the father who films his newborn daughter through the nursery glass but ends up capturing himself). It is all a play of illusions, existences, mirrors, suspended lives, dreams, hopes, fears, disappointments...the second, third, and fourth life (of cinema).