Yi Yi (2000)

"I remember breaking into tears at the end of the movie, but not because it is overly sentimental or emotional. Because it helped me put my own life in perspective. Life can be boring and it can be exciting. Life can be filled with highs and lows and love and hate. That’s what makes it beautiful."

"Often, when I read filmmakers’ lists (including mine), I am frustrated by the absence of their contemporaries. The present is always the hardest to read, and no one will argue if you focus on masters of the past instead. But here are a few names, filmmakers whose work I have been lucky to follow since their beginnings; we’ve crossed paths, more or less frequently, but I have admired them constantly, also because they have been an inspiration. I feel I have had a dialogue with them, or with their films, and it is reflected in my own work. Edward Yang is gone, I miss him a lot, he invented modern Chinese cinema alongside Hou Hsiao-hsien, he was my friend."

"A phenomenal slice-of-life family drama directed by the late Edward Yang from Taiwan that exemplifies some of the great realist cinema that was being made in Asian countries during this time (see Ang Lee). And despite the films having very little to do with each other, I always personally associate this film with In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai. Both films were released here in the U.S. at the same time, and I watched both on the same day. That was a crazy day. I still remember how the air tasted after stepping out of the theater that evening. Also—and I feel I have to mention this—I watched a third film that amazing weekend, After Life by Hirokazu Kore-eda, and it was my favorite of the three (and is one of my all-time favorites). Kore-eda has a nice movie called Still Walking available from Criterion, but I am hoping for a nice edition of After Life someday."

"The late, great Edward Yang’s final film is a sublime study of a Taipei family’s tensions and collisions across time that begs the question of what more we could have seen from this deeply sensitive artist. Something about the cinematic philosophy he offers in this movie manages to help answer that unfathomable question. Shohei Imamura’s eccentric film puts forward the deeply uncomfortable notion that a housewife can find a way out of her abusively loveless marriage by escaping with the burglar who raped her. The story is absolutely nuts, and the emotional transformation our weary protagonist makes is both bold and well-deserved."