The film opens with a wedding, ends with a funeral, and includes a birth, an attempted suicide, and a murder in between. Despite the potential for melodrama in this material, the supreme restraint in Yang’s presentation gives Yi Yi a naturalistic, contemplative tone throughout. Keeping the camera at a distance, Yang lets us decide what to focus on. He does not force drama or importance on us and, at the end, we cherish what we’ve seen all the more because we feel that we have actively chosen what to consider.