I feel I am old too.

Yi Yi

It’s been awhile since I planned to watch this movie, mainly because everybody told me it’s very slow. Maybe it is… but it never felt slow to me! In fact, this is the very first thing that I noticed, I found myself caring for everything that happened in the film, and really none of the scenes were all that long, weren’t they? It’s more like most of the scenes are showing seemingly uninteresting details of people’s lives, especially the dialogues where the little boy is involved. Yang Yang is always posing such delightfully smart questions! I love them very much – he’s like the best little boy character ever! It is true that over these 3 hours running time nothing much happens, but at the same time, every scene is filled with so many of these beautiful details that never bored me, not even a bit.

What I do not agree so much with is the cinematography, which seemed nothing out of the ordinary for me. Sure, there are some interesting details like the video games and the observation cameras, which are lovely ideas. But in comparison to that, I definitely favor Jia Zhangke’s absolutely stunning images, which blow you away with atmosphere at times. The greatness of this film rather lies in the way the characters are portrayed, and how down to earth this is all executed. There are no shocking sex stories, nothing openly socio-critical, nothing political at all. But instead of all that, the film has something much more precious for me: it says so much more about life than perhaps all movies of the 6th generation together. (Okay, I am exaggerating.)

It’s been awhile since I have seen a movie about ‘life’, and I am happy to have found another one. I wonder how I would feel about this movie when I re-watch it in a few years, and I feel this urge of discussing the film now. I wish we would have seen it at a PIFF!

There are some scenes that were somewhat annoying, but then, Ting Ting’s love story became so cute when she was on a date with her boyfriend! I find it wonderful how they are engaging in such an innocent conversation in the Bagels café. That scene alone makes the film worthwhile a watch! I think that movies make our lives into a thousand lives.

Maybe I am just an idiot, but the last 2 1/2 minutes made my slightly distant and nonchalant face covered with tears. It was just so cute and touching, oh my god. Note that this scene has no music, this is not “The Boat that Rocked” that uses music to generate your tears, it’s much much more genuine. I have a feeling that in a few years, I am going to cry myself through the whole film.

I hope my parents would watch this movie, with Chinese subtitles if necessary. Even though they are not Taiwanese, the only thing that really distinguishes these characters from Chinese people is… their ‘Taiwanese accent’.

PS. To choose a movie to watch among two, I often choose the shorter one. I just looked up how long “Whatever works” is and happily I saw that it was only 92 minutes. Then I looked for the other film I wanted to see, “Tirez sur le pianiste”, and it was 92 minutes as well! Ahhhh!