I read an interview with “Drive My Car” director Ryusuke Hamaguchi where he explained why he loves having in-car discussions in his movies. He thinks people are more relaxed and primed to be candid when they are alone in a car together.

Edward Yang liked car scenes as well, and this one features N.J and Ting-Ting having a family discussion that has broader implications. Ting-Ting starts by saying that she feels sorry for Yun-Yun, A-hi’s old girlfriend who was passed over for marriage.

She then gives a sophisticated, but very tribal opinion about the situation: if it’s not uncle’s fault for what happened, then it must be Xiao Yan’s fault. This is a very simplistic description of human relations, an example of black and white thinking, and something very common in clan-based cultures. Who do we blame for the social ills before us — assuming that we will never blame our own kin?

N.J. tries to push back, saying that we shouldn’t blame Xiao Yan, we hardly know her. But Ting-Ting stands her ground saying “I think Grandma’s right, we can’t accept her.”

From there, it veers into a discussion of the grandmother and how she’s feeling. N.J. asks Ting-Ting what she said about the day — which is interesting less for the answers she gives, but the fact that the father relies on his daughter to have an emotional understanding of his mother-in-law.

We’re now back at the reception, and there’s lots of side gossip about the couple. N.J. shares with a friend that the reason they are getting married so late in the pregnancy is because A-hi insisted on getting married on the “luckiest day of the year.”

And then we get another shot of Yang-Yang being teased by the same group of girls. This time they remove one of his shoes and make him fetch it — yelling that he should “not mess around with girls.”

Then the scene cuts to the Jian family table at the reception. Min-Min is trying to defend Xiao Yan, saying that there were plenty of “bus rides without tickets” between young men and women in her day too. This leads into someone speculating about her early relationship with N.J. and an off camera character saying that he was the “bus riding type.”

N.J. arrives at the table at this moment and, not having heard the context, replies that, no, he drove his own car to the reception. The attention now turns to Yang-Yang, who looks sullen and is not eating. Always the one to explain the social dynamic in play, Ting-Ting tells everyone that girls have been teasing him. N.J. tries to cheer him up by offering a camera for him to play with, but Min-Min interrupts and tells her husband to leave him alone.

That clearly didn’t fly, because the scene now cuts to a McDonalds, where we see Yang-Yang happily gobbling down some McNuggets and fries while N.J sips coffee — clearly exhausted from the day already.

It’s about to get worse for N.J. because as they arrive back at the massive, ornate hotel, they wait for an elevator and out steps a woman from his past.

Before getting into the conversation, I want to note that N.J. and Yang-Yang have their backs to the camera through the entire scene, making this the first extended back-of-the-head shot of the movie.

A woman gets off the elevator who looks an inch or two taller than N.J., already suggesting a poor power dynamic for him. She stares at him a minute and says “is it really you?” N.J. says nothing. In fact, he says nothing through the entire encounter. He does nod a couple times — saying yes that he’s still in Taipei and that the boy with him is his son. She hands him a business card, says that it has her number and asks him to call her.

She walks off and appears to walk away with a much older man. She had said that she now lives in the U.S. We never find out if this man is her husband. But before N.J. and Yang-Yang can even get on the elevator, she comes running back to them and asks “why didn’t you come that day? I waited and waited … I never got over it, you know. ”

Before he can answer, the elevator chimes and out steps a colleague of N.J. (and apparently also a former classmate of them both.) He greets her warmly (we find out her name is Sherry) and it ends with another exchange of card, more detail about her life (her husband now has a lot of business in China, so she’ll be visiting more often) and a sheepish explanation from N.J. that he has no business cards to share, he hasn’t replenished them lately.

Actually, he said that he “keeps forgetting” to replace them. And that theme of forgetting is brought up two more times once Sherry walks off. The colleague says that he has forgotten his first love, but for some reason still remembers N.J.’s … and then he admits that he doesn’t remember why he just took the elevator into the lobby.

Now we’re back at the reception and both N.J. and Yang-Yang look sad now. A balloon pops behind them, startling everyone for a moment. This sets off a light bulb for Yang-Yang … he now retrieves a balloon and carefully walks over to the girls table. Just as he arrives, he pops it, making them all scream and overreact to the minor fright.

The rest of the scene consists of wedding reception hijinks, all show in a single long take, that has the feel of being improvised. It mostly serves as another example of A-hi insisting on being the center of attention … and in this case rapidly drinking something that may or may not have made him vomit.

The Criterion Blu-Ray of “Yi Yi” consists of 32 chapter, and the scenes aren’t terribly long — but as you can tell so far, Edward Yang packs every scene with so much information that this is looking to be one of my longest film projects.

Fortunately, it’s a movie worth the effort.