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By PHILIP BOOTH
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 22, 2001
An impressive view
YI YI (A One and a Two) (Not rated, probably PG-13; profanity, mature themes) (173 min.) -- Yi Yi, the much-lauded drama from Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang, might be thought of as a welcome piece of anti-Hollywood propaganda.
The story, about three generations of a wealthy family in contemporary Taipei, is the opposite of high-concept. It is entirely absent of gun violence, explosions, car chases, gratuitous nudity and torrid lovemaking.
Wang, also the screenwriter, instead offers a film that is book-ended by a wedding and a funeral. He relies on careful observations, long takes, minimal cutting and wickedly relaxed pacing -- the movie clocks in at nearly three hours -- to allow viewers to get acquainted with a group of rather ordinary characters.
NJ (Wu Nienjen), a computer executive, is at the center of the narrative. He's lately troubled by the reappearance of an old flame (Ke Suyun), a woman he nearly married three decades earlier. Nu's wife, Min-Min (Elaine Jin), feels guilty about her mother, comatose after a stroke.
Their sensitive daughter (Kelly Lee) is tempted to cheat with her best friend's boyfriend (Yupang Chang). Min-Min's brother (His-Sheng Chin), meanwhile, wonders if he might have made a mistake by marrying the girl he impregnated, rather than his longtime love.
Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang), NJ's 8-year-old son, harassed by his schoolmates, has taken up photography in response to his own inability to "see" the world that others see. The director, similarly, forces us to follow his lead, adjust to his rhythms and look at lives, not unlike our own, that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. It's an impressive view.
In Taiwanese, Mandarin and Japanese, with English subtitles. B+
-- PHILIP BOOTH, Times correspondent