This intricate, elegiac new film by China's leading young director follows three women, interweaving real interviews with fictional ones. Each woman is from a different generation and each, in their prime, was considered the prettiest worker at a factory that's now a symbol of a culture in spasmodic change.

Jia stages this exquisite film-poem over the romantic canals of the historical city of Suzhou, during a 10-year reunion of university friends. They used to be poets or writers – now they discuss investment banking. One of them, the editor of a one-time literary magazine, had written, “The end of our generation does not mean the fall of our generation.” If they are not falling, maybe they’re flowing – with the passing of time, the withering away of youth – toward melancholia, middle age, unrequited longing – flowing away and loosing themselves...

A troubled young woman finally gets the chance to escape her dreary industrial town, by helping a disabled man carry a painting to a city near Hong Kong. Befriending another refugee, she traverses a city that typifies a modern, increasingly urban China in transition. Preceded by short film CRY ME A RIVER.

One of China's leading cinematographers memorably mashes cultures, languages, styles and genres in this unclassifiable, Brazil-set exploration of a globalized culture. The story follows a young man fighting to sustain his adoptive father's black market business, against the police, rival gangs and even his own best interests.