Yi Yi

I found YI YI to be excrutiatingly depressing. It ruined not one, but two days; bringing me into work sad, lonely, and full of heartache. I suppose that a film that makes that kind of emotional impact could be construed as "good," but who wants to go through that kind of a wringer?

That's not to imply that sadness, loneliness, and heartache can't make for an excellent filmgoing experience, but they demand something -anything- to leaven the dough. Beauty, perhaps. Unfortunately, the print of YI YI from which they struck the Netflix disk is so muddy, it's like watching a film projected on the bottom of a lake. That leaves us with the aforementioned pain, and that makes for a rough time at the movies.

Edward Yang, YI YI's creator, sets this family drama in urban Taipei, and he paints it as a city both familiar and wholly inhospitable. It's familiar in that it has the same restaurants, traffic patterns, and development you'd see anywhere. It's inhospitable because the homes lack soul, the restaurants distinction, the life ordinary. In that city, he places a family in crisis: the father's facing the failure of his business, the untrustworthiness of his partners, and the temptation to remake a choice he's always regretted; the mother's undergoing an existential crisis; the grandmother's in a coma in her bedroom; the daughter is learning about love the hard way; and the son, both genius and victim, is trying to learn how to hope in a cruel world. And that's just the nuclear family at the heart of the story - don't get me started on the relatives.

There's a lot here, and I admire the film's complexity and its willingness to tackle relationships in a serious, adult manner. Nevertheless, I can't help but compare it to THE BEST OF YOUTH, an Italian movie that looks at some of the same themes and also does it in a serious, adult manner. THE BEST OF YOUTH, however, has beauty, and a touch of joy, and that makes the medicine go down. YI YI just wants to make us grin and bear it. No, thanks. I can do that in real life.