Yi Yi

Yi Yi

Directed by Edward Yang Yi Yi is a wonderful film with exceptional actors who bring their parts to life. This movie is about life, I like how the director gave the little boy a camera, because the boy, Jian Yang-Yang has so many questions about life and how we perceive the things going on around us. So the boy takes the pictures of the backs of peoples heads. He wonders if we only see half the truth, because we can't see everything around us. The story of the family is told by 3 perspectives, the daughter, Jia Ting-Ting, the son, JIa Yang-Yang, and the father, N.J.

The movie starts off at a wedding, we find out that the groom, Ah-Di isn't marrying for love, instead he is marrying because of a pregnancy. This complicates many things. The woman who feels as if she should be the grooms real wife apologizes to the grandmother. The grandmother isn't too happy about the marriage herself, but she doesn't impose.

By the occurrences in the wedding, we can tell that Yang-Yang is picked on a lot, N.J. finds his old love, and Ting-Ting knows a lot about her little brother.Ting-Ting is a very nurturing individual, she is tentative of other people and tries to help. The day of the wedding, after the grandmother is taken home, Ting-Ting puts out the garbage, then she returns to the wedding with her father. When they get back home, a lady tells them that the grandmother has been sent to the hospital because of an accident by the garbage.

The grandmother is unconscious, but is sent home. They have a nurse that stops by the house to take care of her daily. The doctor tells them to talk to her about their day with her. After a few days, Min-Min, the mother of Ting-Ting realizes that her life is boring and finds nothing to talk about with her mother, so she leaves to the mountains to find her spiritual self.

Ting-Ting becomes her neighbors friend, the girl has a boyfriend, but soon she leaves him for a army man. Fatty, the neighbors ex, doesn't get over her quickly, he uses Ting-Ting as a middle man to get his ex to read his love letters. After a few letters, he writes one for Ting-Ting. They begin to date secretly. Although he is still in love with his ex, he tries to have sexual relations with Ting-Ting, but before going through with it, he realizes that its a mistake and leave her.

As the drama between the two young loves unveils, We see N.J. in Japan on business, but also catching up with his old love. He sees this as a second chance, so he can start over with his first and only love. All the while, Yang-Yang is being teased at school by the students and teachers.

After N.J. goes back home, he finds Yang-Yang's photos, they all focus on the backs of peoples heads. After observing a swimming girl, Yang-Yang tries to swim himself. He gets back home soaked. Yang-Yang gives Ah-Di the photo of the back of his head, hoping that it would give him a better view of his life.

We find out that Fatty kills an English teacher who was sleeping with both Ting-Ting's neighbor and her mother. While this goes on the grandmother finally wakes up. This makes Ting-Ting happy, because throughout the movie, Ting-Ting has felt responsible for the grandmothers accident, she wouldn't sleep until the grandmother woke up, because she would always tell her that if she wakes up that it means that she forgives Ting-Ting, but if she doesn't wake up, that means that she doesn't forgive her.

At 2:30 Ting-Ting talks to her grandmother for a few minutes, then slowly falls asleep, she wakes up a few hours later in her room and finds out that her grandmother passed away at 2:30. N.J. is happy that he got to see his ex and was happy about his second chance, but decides that he'd rather stick to the life he has. He also quits his job.

The funeral was very sad, and the speech Yang-Yang read to his grandmother was heartwarming and touching. I thought it was a perfect ending to a wonderful movie.

I thought it was interesting how they began the movie with a wedding and soon after had a newborn in the picture, then ended with a funeral. I believe the movie has a lot to do with living. It talks about second chances, different perspectives, old loves, new loves, and death.

I noticed that the Chinese zodiac and superstitions are very important in China, maybe not to everyone, but it is important. Because Ah-Di knew that the birthday of the baby was unlucky, so he married on a very lucky day and named the baby a lucky name, hoping that it would balance the negative and positive.