Three Times

Chen (Chang Chen) is a soldier in 1966 who goes looking for a pool-hall hostess he met once, and the film begins there. Hou Hsiao-hsien then tells the same pairing three times, with Shu Qi and Chang Chen as a courtesan and a freedom fighter in 1911, and as a singer and a photographer in 2005. Each era changes what the two of them are allowed to say to each other, and what they can only leave unsaid.