Yi Yi: A One and a Two
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| Yi Yi: A One and a Two | |
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| Directed by | Edward Yang |
| Produced by | Shinya Kawai |
| Written by | Edward Yang |
| Starring | Nien-Jen Wu, Elaine Jin, Issei Ogata, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Hsi-Sheng Chen, Su-Yun Ko |
| Music by | Kai-Li Peng |
| Distributed by | Kuzui Enterprises |
| Release date(s) | May 14, 2000 |
| Running time | 173 min. |
| Language | Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese (Hokkien) English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Yi Yi: A One and a Two (Chinese: 一一; pinyin: yīyī; literally "one one") is an acclaimed Taiwanese film directed by Edward Yang about the emotional struggles of a business man and the lives of his middle class Taiwanese family in Taipei seen though three generations. The English title refers to how two Chinese characters for "one" (一) written in vertical alignment can be viewed as meaning "A One" or as a single character meaning "Two" (二).
Yi Yi is an epic story about the Jian family seen through three different perspectives: the father NJ (Nien-Jen Wu), the son Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang), and the daughter, Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee). The three-hour piece starts with a wedding, concludes with a funeral, and contemplates all areas of human life in-between with profound humour, beauty and poignancy. The other Taiwanese casts include Elaine Jin as NJ's wife, Min-Min, Su-Yun Ko as NJ's former love Sherry, Hsi-Sheng Chen as Ah-Di, and Pang Chang Yu as Fatty. The film also stars Japanese comedian Issei Ogata as a Japanese software mogul, Ota.
Following its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000, Yi Yi has collected a host of awards from prestigious international film festivals. Yi Yi garnered its director, Edward Yang the Best Director at Cannes Award in 2000 and was nominated for the Palm D'Or in the same year. Yi Yi won the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival's Netpac Award, the Vancouver International Film Festival's Chief Dan George Humanitarian Award and tied with Topsy-Turvy to win the 2000 Sarajevo Film Festival's Panorama Jury Award. The film also won Best Foreign Film from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics in 2001, the Grand Prix at the Friboug International Film Festival in Switzerland in 2001, The Best Foreign Film from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards in 2000, Best Film from the National Society of Film Critics in 2001, and Best Foreign Language Film from the New York Film Critics Circle Awards in 2000. It was also named one of the best movies of 2001 by many prominent publications and intellectuals, including the New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today the Village Voice, Film Comment, the Chicago Reader, and the author Susan Sontag, among others.
In 2002, the film was selected by the British film magazine Sight and Sound as one of the ten greatest films of the past twenty-five years, among Apocalypse Now. Raging Bull, Fanny and Alexander, GoodFellas, Blue Velvet, Do the Right Thing, Blade Runner, Chungking Express, Distant Voices, Still Lives, and Once Upon a Time in America.
