Pun Salad

This movie got a passel of film-critic awards and mostly delerious reviews, but was snubbed at the Oscars. (It was the same year as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and apparently there was only room for one Taiwanese nominee.) The writer/director, Edward Yang, died a couple years ago, sad to say.

Yi Yi is a small-scope epic: it follows the Jiang family of Taipei over the course of a few months. There's NJ, the father; the mother is Min-Min; teenage daughter Ting-Ting, and 8-year-old son Yang-Yang. (I am not making up those names.) Each has his or her own problems: NJ's first love from thirty years ago shows up unexpectedly, and his business is being forced to seek out alliances for new products. Min-Min's mother has lapsed into a coma, and her idiot brother is in dire financial straits. Ting-Ting is wracked by guilt over her grandmother's illness, and she's getting sucked into the troubled relationships of the mother and daughter who live next door. And little Yang-Yang is tormented by older girls, and is gamely trying to find out the meaning of life through photography and swimming.

It's long, nearly three hours. But it's very touching, funny in spots, grim in others, ultimately optimistic and upbeat.

I was struck by Western influences: on the edge of the family bathtub are plastic bottles of Dove and Head & Shoulders; when Yang-Yang refuses to eat at a wedding reception, NJ takes him out to McDonald's for some Chicken McNuggets and fries; when Ting-Ting practices the piano, she plays Gershwin's "Summer Time"; a couple of scenes are set in a restaurant named "N. Y. Bagels"; and—for some reason this surprised me most of all—when NJ meets with a philosophical Japanese businessman, they converse in English. I didn't expect that.