Yi Yi

Director: Edward Yang

2000 / 173min / 35mm

The last work of a master filmmaker who died far too young, the gentle, restrained, and terribly humane Yi Yi observes the interplay between three generations of an upper middle-class Taipei family. Comic when dealing in the foibles of its excellent ensemble cast and the mores of the urban bourgeoise, yet also possessed throughout by an air of unmistakable melancholy and lingering regret at missed opportunities, this feeling made all the deeper when one considers the great films Yang might still have produced. A work of epic length that avoids even a hint of bombast, dedicated instead to working its way into the hidden, niche spaces of everyday people’s emotional lives, it’s a film as rich and as sad as life itself.