Notwithstanding this distanced approach, Yang invigorates the story with a richness of everyday life reminiscent of the works of Jean Renoir or Yasujiro Ozu. This demands capturing the details of the characters’ lives, which Yang gets just right. In a single shot, he perfectly catches the tone of post-celebratory exhaustion as the family drives home after A-Di’s wedding reception. No one speaks over the hypnotic hum of the car engine, and Yang-Yang is invisible, presumably sleeping in the backseat on his mother’s lap. After Grandma has had her stroke, Ting-Ting lies in bed in the dark as her parents return from the hospital. She strains to hear what happened to Grandma amidst the distant murmurs of her parents. Though her face is hidden in shadow, her yearning to know is palpable. And when NJ and Sherry are waiting for a train in Japan, in an extreme long shot, Sherry tenderly edges NJ back just a little from the tracks as a train pulls in. The way this instinctual, affectionate gesture is performed could only occur between two people who have had a world of history between them.