This lengthy exposition gives some indication of the novelistic complexity of A One and a Two…, but it barely covers the first hour of its near-three-hour running time. Though the film is packed with incident, it’s mostly of the everyday, emotional variety. Scenes are often viewed at a distance, through windows, half-closed doors, slender openings, in reflections or even from way off. Ting-Ting’s balcony scene, for instance (which happens during the credits), contains just three set-ups. Ting-Ting, while taking the first bag of rubbish out, has just seen Lili meet Fatty by the rubbish bins. From a slightly angled mid-shot of the whole balcony we see Ting-Ting come outside where she drops small rubbish bags into a larger sack. The first cut goes to a full-on long shot of the neighbour’s window, which is at a right angle to the balcony, with a huge motorway overpass system in the background. Lili’s mother opens the window (on the day she’s just moved in) to get a better reception on her mobile phone. The second cut is to a very long shot from the balcony’s POV of Lili and Fatty below, tiny in the distance, embracing beneath the flyover. The third cut returns to the first position, where we see Ting-Ting on the balcony gazing down. Then her father’s voice calls her from within and she forgets the sack. What’s effective about this simple scene is that not only do you get a sense of the neighbour’s neglect of her daughter Lili, but that Ting-Ting’s switch from doing the chores to contemplating the romantic attachment is more of a revelation because it’s divided into separate images, with the moment she notices the couple left off screen. Yang’s script structures insist on such quiet revelation. Each scene peels off like the skin of an onion, giving away only so much at a time. When you get to the core you feel as if you know precisely what it’s like to live in the Jians’ seemingly average Taipei apartment block. As a former engineer and one-time prize-winning cartoonist, Yang prefers to produce scripts of careful shot descriptions backed by comprehensive psychological character profiles, using collaborators to turn these into the conventional screenplays producers need to raise money. The script’s architecture is so strong you feel you understand how each compartmentalised life fits with the others and the way each character achieves a means of escape back into the personal when necessary. Yang keeps sympathy with everyone, without judgement. For instance, though A-Di is shown to be the antithesis of NJ, he is at least a man of action. He makes things happen, even if they are mostly ill thought-out, and the chaos in his wake is churned up with the best intentions.
BFI | Sight & Sound | Emotional Engineering
Posted 1 year ago
