A One and Two: A Film by Edward Yang

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A Review of Edward Yang’s Film “A One and Two”
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EDWARD YANG: A ONE AND A TWO
(“YI YI”)
Yi Yi is a movie centered on the lives of a Taiwanese family who reside in Taipei. The movie depicts an affluent and successful family of Jian living in the city of Highrise. The three generations of the family are haunted by missed opportunities lost. Amidst this, the movie manages to capture the struggles and triumphs of daily existence.
Plot
The movie opens with a wedding. NJ’s irresponsible brother-in-law is getting married to a girl he impregnated. We first encounter a missed opportunity when a hysterical woman makes an apology to the groom’s mother: "It should have been me walking down the aisle with your son today!" NJ is haunted by this too when he encounters his first love of 30 years on the elevator lobby and proceeds to wonder what his life would have been had he married her. As the story unfolds, it probably would not have been much different than it was currently with him chasing success and his career and forgetting his happiness.
NJ’s mother-in-law surfers a stroke and is comatose. As advised by the doctor, the family takes turns talking to her and from this, her daughter Min-Min discovers that she’s living a blank because she only tells her mother the same thing. She takes a spiritual retreat.
Ting-Ting and Yang-Yang, NJ’s children, no less than their parents, live their lives in private world. Ting-Ting is worried that she may have caused her grandmother’s stroke and being a teenager, gets tangled in a love triangle. Yang-Yang tired of being picked on by girls and a teacher at school, he retreats in his imagination and takes to photography as a means to better see and understand the world.
The movie ends with NJ’s mother-in-law funera...