Family dramas are a movie staple, but few have the texture of real family life, in which individual destinies unfold and interact in ways too messy and complex for the usual movie ad copy. What we usually get instead is either melodrama or caricature -- i.e., something that can be easily packaged and sold in one high concept line. The rare director, such as Robert Altman, who tries to put the whole enchilada on the screen may be commended for bravery, but gets tagged as difficult -- the commercial kiss of death.

In "A One and A Two" (Yi Yi), that most difficult and talented of Taiwanese directors, Edward Yang, tells stories of a family in modern Taipei that may follow an arc -- his film begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral -- but do not observe the usual plot conventions. (There is, in fact, no plot at all.) His people look like ordinary upper-middle class Taiwanese (for good reason -- most are unknowns with little or no acting experience), but he does not present them as representatives of anything but themselves.

Altman does something similar in the ensemble pieces "Nashville" and "A Wedding," but his approach is extrovertedly American, coloring everything more brightly than life to the point of grotesquerie. Yang's approach is the opposite, almost too much so, dialing down the emotional tones to the beiges and grays of postmodern angst.