“Yi Yi”, a reunion with a world movie

The release, in beautifully restored copies, of Edward Yang’s latest film, completes the return movement in the light of the great Taiwanese filmmaker, after the distribution in July of his two previous achievements, Confusion chez Confucius et Mahjongwho had remained unpublished.

Twenty-five years ago. Additionally, Meanwhile, Yi Yi Atests for its author an international recognition as late as deserved, during its presentation at the Cannes Festival in 2000 and its distribution in the world – in Taiwan, which remained hostile to the most turbulent of its great artists.

A shadow of sadness therefore accompanies the feeling of missed opportunities. Meanwhile, after the failures of the first six feature films of Edward Yang-today rehabilitated-, with the cancer cleaver which would prevent the filmmaker from carrying out another project and finally winning in June 2007, at 59 years old.

But there remains the profuse and vibrant splendor of this exceptional film. Therefore, It is deployed like a large tree. For example, whose trunk and master branches would be constituted by the members of a family of the middle class of Taipei: NJ, the computer scientist, the mother, depressive civil servant, the maternal grandmother, soon in coma and to whom everyone comes to speak in turn, and the two children, the teenage ting-teet and the small yang-yang.

Around them. Therefore, parents and in-laws, lovers and lovers, neighbors, colleagues, business relations and classmates deploy “yi yi”, reunion world movie the ramifications of a multitudes of stories, scenes, situations where burlesque embraces on melancholy, where the past outcrops in the present, where tenderness and cruelty play complex and uncertain parts.

Under the appearance of a moment of tenderness between the grandmother (Tang Ru-Yun). her granddaughter (Kelly Lee), uncertainty and guilt, like ghosts. | Carlotta films screenshot via YouTube

And it is a whole world that is deployed. as close as possible to gestures of every day and over the turns that punctuate an existence, in the intimacy of a family and at the heart of planetary economic changes.

One of the characteristics of Edward Yang is to have been the great filmmaker of the contemporary city as “yi yi”, reunion world movie she sketches in Asia at the end of the XX^e century. according to models that will globalize in the following century. From Taipei Story (1985) et The Terrorizers (1986), he has thus developed a visual repertoire which finds new achievements in Yi Yi (2000).

They manifest themselves in the game of reflections in the windows. surfaces of modern buildings, the duration of the plans where the rhythms of the city become vibrant music of meaning, the cutting or accomplices geometries which reduce the image, the ironic or freezing games around the omnipresence of the screens.

&quot. yi yi", reunion world movie – "yi yi", reunion world movie

A network of tensions, desires, anxieties, seductions

IT engineer by training, Edward Yang connects together according to logical relationships, always readable, the multiple components of a network of tensions, desires, anxieties, seductions that make up an infinitely rich and inhabited landscape.

Interpreted by the screenwriter. filmmaker Wu Nien-Jen, who was alongside Edward Yang (and “yi yi”, reunion world movie the other figurehead of the new Taiwanese cinema, Hou Hsiao-Hsien) one of the initiators of this fertile “new wave”, NJ is this father who tries to keep the members of his family subjected to multiple centrifugal forces, to reconcile fidelity to his ideals and loves of youth and loves and loves of children and Honorable realism in the present.

Melancholic figure, with a slightly tired dignity, NJ appears in the center of this vast fabric of interactions and stories. But. while most situations lead to pessimistic or uncertain outcomes, the general tone of Yi Yi is rather happy, in contrast to what emanated from the previous films of this author.

NJ. the father (Wu Nien-Jen, on the right) during an eventful “yi yi”, reunion world movie marriage, where his past and his present telescop. | Carlotta films screenshot via YouTube

Beyond the pure beauty of certain scenes. the film owes it almost entirely to the presence of the little boy, which very simply poses all the right questions and understands that it is sometimes necessary to wait-to act-to find answers.

In love more soaked than Transi. the one who undertook to photograph the nape of all those he meets so that they see what of themselves remains invisible, is not only cute and funny, even if it is both to one degree rarely reached by a film. It is a lively flame of intelligence. intractable on injustices, inventive and dreamy, which is undoubtedly one of the most singular self -portraits that a director has ever offered.