The story of a family embroiled in the "White Terror," the Kuomintang government's anti-communist political repression that was wrought on the Taiwanese people from 1947-1987.

Master puppeteer Li Tien-lu recalls his life in Japanese-occupied Taiwan during the first half of the 20th century.

An actress preparing to play in a historical epic is terrorized by someone faxing her pages from her stolen diary; has colorful flashbacks of her affair with a now-deceased man; and imagines black-and-white film-within-a-film scenes of the movie she is about to appear in.