Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
A Taipei family faces personal and moral uncertainty as everyday events test their relationships and sense of purpose.
Yi Yi is one of the great humanist films—Edward Yang's panoramic, patient study of a Taipei family across generations is extraordinary in nearly every dimension. The plotting weaves multiple storylines with rare naturalism and depth; the acting is uniformly superb, with Wu Nien-jen's quietly devastating performance at the center. Yang's cinematography is genuinely exceptional—long takes, reflective glass surfaces, and precise framing that transforms domestic space into something philosophical. The film is wholly singular in its conception and execution, achieving a one-of-a-kind register of tenderness and melancholy that no other filmmaker quite replicates. The ending, while emotionally resonant and fitting, is the one element that functions more as an inevitable arrival than a revelation, holding back just slightly from the heights of the film's finest passages.