Yi Yi | Telescope Film
Yi Yi

Yi Yi (一一)

Critic Rating

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User Rating

This epic story follows one ordinary summer in the lives of a middle class family in Taipei. We get to know each member of the family and their individual struggles, from the lost loves of the adults to the simpler problems of the children.

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What are users saying?

Meagen Tajalle

This film is well worth the longer runtime. When I finished it, I wanted to start it from the beginning and watch it again. It's deeply moving and Edward Yang's minimalist shooting style puts the audience in a room with these characters, not just in a room watching a movie about them. Even in a foreign language, the writing is almost overwhelmingly sensitive to each character's emotions. This film addresses pain in a way that is true to life, but arrives at a reassuring subtle optimism about the human condition.

What are critics saying?

100

Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt

Yang favors a gentle and introspective style that shows how deep and strong everyday emotions can run. A memorable treat.

100

San Francisco Chronicle by Edward Guthmann

Wise, delicate and impeccably performed, Yi Yi is a three- hour drama that looks at one middle-class family in transition -- and does so with such a kind and probing eye that we all see our lives reflected through Yang's lens.

100

Slant Magazine by Ed Gonzalez

The film’s brilliance emanates equally from its structure (the story is delicately bookended by two cultural rituals: a wedding and a funeral), the acuteness of its gaze, and Yang’s acknowledgement of life as a series of alternately humdrum and catastrophic occurrences, like a flower that blooms in the summer and wilts in the fall; he hopes you will notice it, because seeing is what validates its unique extraordinariness.

100

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

These 173 minutes don't drag, they waltz.

100

Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington

Great, bittersweet family drama.

100

Washington Post by Desson Thomson

On one level, Yi Yi is classic soap opera, with a suicide attempt, a wedding ceremony, even a brutal 11 o'clock news murder, all in the mix. But Yang's direction is so admirably restrained, it lends rich heft to everything.

100

Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold

It's a magical film -- an exquisitely made and exceedingly wise family drama that communicates a touching sense of the universality of the human condition, and leaves us with the rich emotional satisfaction we just don't seem to get often at the movies anymore.

100

Salon by Charles Taylor

Quietly overwhelming.

100

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

In exchange for three hours of your time, Yi Yi will give you more life.

90

Film.com

More than a family saga, this is a family meditation.

90

Newsweek by David Ansen

One of the year's best: a rich, funny, enormously humane portrait of a middle-class Taipei family in the throes of romantic, economic and spiritual upheaval.

90

Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan

Wonderfully humanistic film. Yi Yi investigates the entire melody of life.

90

L.A. Weekly by Manohla Dargis

Generous, soulful film.

90

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

A marvel of delicacy and humor.

90

Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

Yang seems to miss nothing as he interweaves shifting viewpoints and poignant emotional refrains.

88

Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman

Yi Yi is an intimate movie, for all its length and complexity.

88

Philadelphia Inquirer by Carrie Rickey

It may be the first meditative action movie.