This post is a part of an ongoing project in which I watch one movie from a different country every other week.

PLOT: Beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral, this movie follows each member of a middle-class Taiwanese family as they face challenging relationships and personal obstacles in their daily lives.

MEMORABLE MOMENT: This family drama is filled with awkward, humorous and heartbreaking moments, but there are none more memorable than one that takes place before the wedding I mentioned above. A woman enters the hall as everything is being set up. At first no one recognizes her. When a girl asks if she needs help, the woman tells her to mind her own business. She eventually finds the groom’s mother, abandons all poise and kneels before her, wailing (according to the English Subtittles): “I’m so sorry! It should have been me marrying your son today. I let you down, I’m so sorry. It breaks my heart, I’m not worthy of you!” She’s then escorted out, shouting, “Where is she? Where is that pregnant bitch?”

That last line in particular tells you the whole backstory between this woman, the groom and his pregnant bride.

WHO IS IT FOR?: Yi Yi is a movie that follows a family through an unusually turbulent time in their lives. Many of the characters are worried about their future, both in terms of finances as well as relationships and several are on the verge of repeating mistakes they have made in the past. It is a quiet, grounded film about realistic people facing real life problems. While there are a few moments that skirt the line of melodrama (see the “memorable moment” above), for the most part it is a marvelous example of a film that follows the concept that movies should capture reality as accurately as possible, including all the mundane, humdrum moments along with the delightful, tragic ones.

Yi Yi is a challenging film. I don’t mean this as a criticism. Most of the greatest films (and works of art in general) are challenging. I am tempted to just give an all out rave description of the movie, but I have to be honest, a three-hour-long drama that follows the everyday trials of a family is not for everyone. It is certainly not the kind of movie you want to watch on a Friday night after a hectic workweek. Rather, it is a movie you should watch when you are in the mood to really sit down and commit the time to watching something, taking in the beauty of the scenes, the relationships and the parallels between the various story lines (a middle-aged man considers having an affair with a childhood flame while his teenage daughter encounters love for the first time).

I often found myself wondering where this movie was going. Yi Yi does eventually reach a conclusion. It isn’t an overly bombastic climax or a mind warping revelation. Instead it is something the viewers have been expecting (and the characters have been dreading) throughout the film. There is no great resolution. Instead it is implied that the characters will just keep on doing what they have been doing up to this point, continuing their lives and trying to be as happy as possible. What we have witnessed has just been an unusually difficult period and we can only hope that things will eventually get better.

Yi Yi is a film for people seeking the mundane as well as the hectic moments of life. It is a movie for viewers who want to witness the visual and emotional beauty found in cities, apartment buildings and schools. The film is filled with moments most of us have lived through, weddings, funerals, journeys, homecomings, reunions, first kisses, little moments of petty revenge and other rites of passage. It is a movie that embraces life for all its beautiful and mundane moments and for that it is a quietly epic masterpiece.

DIRECTOR: Edward Yang

WRITER: Edward Yang

STARING: Nien-Jen Wu, Kelly Lee & Su-Yun Ko