Rebecca Pan

Friends turn into lovers and affairs abound when two couples move into a new apartment building around the same time in the 1960s.

Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Michiko Hada, and Michelle Reis, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s gorgeous period reverie is an intoxicating, time-bending experience that traces the romantic intrigue, jealousies, and tensions swirling around four late-nineteenth-century Shanghai “flower houses,” where courtesans live confined to a gilded cage.

After a young man meets the same young woman on two consecutive days just before three o'clock, he promptly declares that the minute before three is their minute.

Shanghai, a fast-changing metropolis, a port city where people come and go. Eighteen locals, including film director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, ex-soldiers and criminals, recall their lives. Their personal experiences, like eighteen chapters of a novel, tell stories of Shanghai from the 1930s to 2010.

Produced by Wong Kar Wai—and featuring some of his most beloved stars—this irresistibly entertaining comic adventure giddily spoofs everything from classic Chinese musicals to wuxia epics to Wong’s own films. In Ming Dynasty China, an Emperor (Chang Chen) and a princess (Faye Wong), both desperate for the life of a free-spirited wanderer, attempt to escape from the royal palace. The princess, disguised as a man, finds herself attracting the attention of a boorish restaurant owner (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), precipitating much gender- and genre-bending mayhem.