The biggest problem with YiYi is that it lasts for at least an hour too long, without saying much in the process. Another major flaw was the way that it spells everything out, without trusting to the audience to pick up subtly expressed connections and motivations. Two examples readily come to mind. When the characters one at a time talk to the comatose, but off-screen grandmother, I realized that this was akin to a form of traditional ancestor worship. Then the main character, the businessman, says directly that this talking is like praying. A more blatant example was the inter-cutting and overly obvious parallels between the father's past as discussed in Tokyo and his daughters present back in Taipei. This is where good editing could have made the film more thought-provoking, less obvious and more interesting.
Another problem for me was the fact that I couldn't connect or care about any of the characters. Possibly this was because they had trouble expressing emotion and interacting with each other, but I felt uninvolved with all of them. A pretty disappointing feat for a nearly 3 hour family character study. The camera work was also very static and dispassionate. At first, views through empty doorways, awaiting characters to walk through them, and long shots of couples seemed interesting. But their repetition and lack of variation made these distancing techniques become stultifying. This was especially true of the many long takes that occurred towards the end of the film.
I also thought the main character showed a fairly limited acting range, while some of the crying scenes were given over to poor acting. Overall, I was left mostly bored and wishing I had chosen a better and shorter film for the evening.
Another problem for me was the fact that I couldn't connect or care about any of the characters. Possibly this was because they had trouble expressing emotion and interacting with each other, but I felt uninvolved with all of them. A pretty disappointing feat for a nearly 3 hour family character study. The camera work was also very static and dispassionate. At first, views through empty doorways, awaiting characters to walk through them, and long shots of couples seemed interesting. But their repetition and lack of variation made these distancing techniques become stultifying. This was especially true of the many long takes that occurred towards the end of the film.
I also thought the main character showed a fairly limited acting range, while some of the crying scenes were given over to poor acting. Overall, I was left mostly bored and wishing I had chosen a better and shorter film for the evening.