Synopsis

Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life’s meaning as they live through everyday quandaries. NJ is morose: his brother owes him money, his mother is in a coma, his wife suffers a spiritual crisis when she finds her life a blank and his business partners make bad decisions.

Curator’s Note

A one and a Two, a collection of thoughtful reflections on human nature and pessimistic inquiries into reality by Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang, is considered to be among the highest levels of Chinese film history. It is both a penetratingly realistic film and a melancholic projection of the inner turmoil of contemporary people under the urban canvas. The film clearly illustrates a middle-class Taipei family's life ups and downs and emotional twists and turns with ease. This film revolves around three key characters: NJ, Tingting and Yangyang. All three carry a strong reflection of Edward Yang’s idealism: How can a genuine person be swayed by the world? We can see in them a kind of forbearance and kindness, an unsettled love, and a diligent search for “truth”. Yang employed the superimposition of audiovisual scenarios to weave the spiritual coincidence of the three characters into an ingenious resonance of destiny, always echoing the film’s theme: in this day and age, we don’t know enough about “human”. Yang said that life can be lengthened threefold by films, but then realises that “living again won’t make any difference”. Like being unable to see behind our own backs, this kind of paradoxes run throughout the film, forming ingenious discussions about the nature of life. These discussions not only reflect the local current affairs and social landscape at the beginning of the 21st century, but also flow into the confused or disturbed spiritual world of each person, which is everlasting in today’s world where interpersonal distance is becoming more and more distant. For his direction of A One and a Two, Edward Yang won the Best Director Award at the 53rd Cannes International Film Festival in 2000. (wrote by Shaoyang Wang, translated by Pengyu Du)

Director’s bio

A Taiwanese filmmaker. He rose to prominence as a pioneer in the Taiwanese New Wave of the 1980s, alongside fellow auteurs Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-Liang. Yang was regarded as one of the leading filmmakers of Taiwanese cinema. He won the Best Director Award at Cannes for his 2000 film Yi Yi.

Director’s Note

Festival & Awards

2000: Cannes Film Festival, Award for Best Director and nominated to Palme d'Or (Edward Yang) Sarajevo Film Festival Winner Panorama Jury Prize (Edward Yang）

Casts

Wu Nien-jen, Kelly Lee, Elaine Jin, Jonathan Chang

Credits

Screenplay: Edward Yang

Producers: Shinya Kawai, Hsi-Sheng Chen

Associate Producers: Osamu Kubota, Weiyen Yu

Cinematography: Weihan Yang Lighting: Longyu Li

Editing: Bowen Chen

Sound: Duzhi Du Music: Kaili Peng

Art direction: Zhengkai Wang