Yi Yi

Winner of the Best Picture award from the National Society of Film Critics, Edward Yang’s Yi Yi is “the work of a master in full command of the resources of his art” (A. O. Scott, New York Times). The film is bookended by a wedding and a wake and fittingly seems to hold all of life’s laughter, joys, and heartbreaks in its frames as it follows a year in the life of one multigenerational middle-class family in Taipei. Told as a series of snapshots of everyday events, Yi Yi offers an embarrassment of cinematic and emotional riches. Of special note, though, is the soulful Wu Nien-jen (himself a director and writer, and one of the founders, with Yang, of the New Taiwan Cinema) as the father who juggles business problems, family breakdowns, and the appearance of an old flame, and Jonathan Chang as his precocious eight-year-old son, whose attempts to make sense of it all through art are as original as they are unforgettable.