Review of Yi Yi (2000) by Ahmedaiman1999 — 07 Aug 2019

With beautiful and expressive shots, sensitive and eloquent direction, incredible acting by all involved, and a plethora of brilliantly quotable lines, add to that the fact it's considered a "slice-of-life" film, Yi Yi really could have been easily one of my favourite films of all time. Alas, I can't even say that I liked it!

Two main reasons this film didn't resonate with me nearly as much as I expected are that: I didn't find the vast majority of the characters to be interesting, and I couldn't see why this is considered to be a slice-of-life film in the first place.

The only character I was almost constantly interested in is Yang-Yang. I found the relationship between N.J. and Sherry quite absorbing and engrossing as well as the scenes with N.J. and his Japanese friend; I can't say I really cared about the character of N.J. as I was supposed to be.

I couldn't care less about everything related to N.J.'s wife, teenage daughter, brother and business partners. Apart from one scene N.J.'s wife shares with N.J.'s mother that was a bit emotional, I found the film emotionally flat and almost fell asleep every time I see these above-mentioned characters. I found the story-line of Ting-Ting to be one of the most boring and uneventful I've seen in any film. Let alone the fact this film is 3 hours long!

A slice-of-life is a term used to describe a piece of art or literature that shows or depicts the ordinary details of real life. And I'm enamored of any film or novel that can be classified under this, so to speak, sub-genre. The thing is I couldn't see that Yi Yi fits this description. What I saw, in the first 30 minuted in particular, are many of uninteresting characters acting in an absurd way. I really couldn't see that this film has mundane real-life events as most people do.

(6.