Hsiao-Kang sells watches in the streets of Taipei for a living. A few days after his father’s death, he meets a young woman, Shiang-Chyi, who as it turns out leaves for Paris the very next day. He runs around setting all the watches and clocks in Taipei to Paris time.

A mourning wife finds her dead husband reincarnated as a fish. An older Jean-Pierre Léaud is summoned into existence following a viewing of The 400 Blows. Tsai’s masterwork is an elliptical study in grief, loss and synchronicity that seeks to symbolically obliterate the wounding effects of time.