Ding Hui (Zhang Ziyi) is a member of Purple Butterfly, a powerful resistance group in Japanese occupied Shanghai. An unexpected encounter reunites her with Itami, an ex-lover and officer with a secret police unit tasked with dismantling Purple Butterfly.

The great, subversive 6th Generation Chinese director Lou Ye followed his Wong Kar Wai inspired hit Suzhou River with this gorgeous 1930s wartime love story. Bending and warping time, memory, and trauma, it looks at a romance between two lovers separated by both war and nation.