Quick recap: Three generations of a Taiwanese family go through every sort of hardship you can imagine. It’s like Degrassi but not Canadian and a serious lack of teen pregnancy.  On the plus side, no Drake!

You’ll always be Jimmy.

Fun (?) fact: Most of the actors in the movie were relatively unknown at the time. The director did this to add to the realism of the film.

My thoughts: ‘3 hour movie about a family with hardships’, I texted my husband, adding a very bored emoji to the end of the sentence for emphasis. You know the one I’m talking about. He texted back in sympathy, but I knew I was on my own. ‘There better be a few deaths,’ I muttered to myself and then settled in.

The first half hour of the film was very hard to follow because there were so many characters and because the subtitles were confusing. I was finally able to identify the main characters and that helped somewhat: NJ, the father, his wife Min-Min and their two kids Ting-Ting and Yang-Yang, Min-Min’s mother and also A-Di, the brother. Throughout the course of the movie each character will go through something life changing, and each hardship will be dealt with almost completely alone. It sounds like every melodrama ever, but for some reason it works in Yi-Yi. I especially loved how each storyline was separate and yet it weaved in and out with the other story lines, yet nothing felt overblown or……well,melodramatic.

Although NJ is the main character, it is the grandmother I was most drawn to. She is onscreen for barely 10 minutes before suffering a major stroke. The rest of the film is her laying in the apartment, breathing tubes and feeding tubes hooked up to her. As her family seemingly crumbles around her, she continues to lay in a coma and thus becomes the perfect listener. Her grand daughter, Ting-Ting feels guilt from the beginning because she feels she has caused the stroke. She asks for her grandmother’s forgiveness several times and is finally granted it at the end of the film. Ting-Ting’s mother, Min-Min, has a spiritual crisis that manifests itself after she realizes how boring her life is. There were so many heartbreaking scenes, but this one did it for me. There was something so sincere about Min-Min as she realized she was supposed to care for her mother by talking to her, and yet had nothing to say because everything was the same. At this point, it was easy to forget I was watching a movie as it begin to feel more like a documentary.

The little boy in the film, Yang-Yang, is probably the cutest kid ever. I’m generally weary of cute child actors, but I loved this one from the beginning. After coming to the conclusion that people will never see their full reality, he decides to take pictures of things people don’t generally see: mosquitos and the back of people’s heads. Yang-Yang is in constant trouble at school and it isn’t until the final scene of the film where everything comes together and I saw how misunderstood his actions were. I won’t give away the ending, although it’s really not much of a surprise, but I will say that I’m glad the movie ended realistically and not all perfectly wrapped up.

Final review: 4/5.  Most people would love Yi-Yi, but the length is a little long. Nothing felt too drawn out but it’s still a lot to ask for in an audience.

Up next: The Sting. Don’t forget to send in your movie suggestions to mabelsfa56@gmail.com or by commenting on a post!

Quick recap: A man is married to two women at the same time and of course, neither of them know of the other. Do zany hijinks ensue??? No.

Fun (?) fact: This movie was rather devoid of ‘fun’ facts, unless you count Jack Benny’s real house being in the movie. I certainly don’t and I’m silently judging those of you that do.

Jack Benny is suspicious of the fact being labeled ‘fun’

My thoughts: With a title as straightforward as this one, I was expecting something a little more lighthearted, like ‘Oh, that bigamist! Will he ever learn?’ And then one of the women turns to the camera and does a cute shrug of her shoulders and everyone laughs. What The Bigamist ended up being was almost opposite, bordering on melodrama. The story starts with a couple-Harry and Eve Graham- trying to adopt a child since Eve can’t conceive on her own. Mr. Jordan, the adoption coordinator, has the two sign a form consenting to a full background check. Eve happily signs hers while you can almost see the sweat poring out of Harry. Two minutes into the movie and I already know who The Bigamist is! I’m grateful to watch a film that gets right to the point, although I wonder how it would’ve played to keep it a secret like trying to figure out who the murderer is. Is it the postman? Is it the waiter? Is it the guy with shifty eyes, sweat poring out of every orifice?

I was a little surprised by the sensitivity shown to all characters involved, especially considering that no one is really painted as the bad guy. Eve is unable to conceive a child of her own and tries to make up for it by being the perfect wife and business partner to Harry. Harry is the overworked husband, commuting constantly from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Feeling very lonely, he strikes up a relationship with another woman that eventually leads to her getting knocked up. As bad as that sounds, once Harry realizes that Phyllis is pregnant (which would have been near impossible for me to understand. The word ‘pregnancy’ is never mentioned. Instead we see Phyllis lying in bed, her stomach completely hidden by a comforter) he asks her to marry him to make things right. Phyllis is also a victim in the situation. She spends the entire movie trying to prove that she doesn’t need anyone and then when she finally admits to needing Harry, he gets arrested for bigamy. Seeing as how this movie was made in the early 50s, I was expecting a lot more woman blaming, but in the end, Harry owned up to everything.

As for the bigamy thing, I’m a little conflicted about who it really hurt. Harry spends most of the movie moaning about how hard it was to keep the secret of two families, but he never really goes into what it’s like to have two wives. Both women seem happy with the situation and both are well cared for. But bigamy is against the law and it was only a matter of time before everything blew up. Is bigamy still a thing? I would imagine that it would be much harder to pull something off these days, what with the Twitters, Facebooks and digital records. The final courtroom scene I felt did a great job summarizing the issue. If Harry had just kept Phyllis as a mistress, no one would’ve really cared. But the fact that he tried to make an ‘honest woman’ out of her is what did him in. It seemed like both women really loved him, but how could they continue?

Dan Savage would probably say DTMFA, or maybe everyone should just go poly!

FInal review: 4/5. Dramatic, but not overly so.

Up next: #100.