With a fairly standard story of a lover's triangle, director Sun Zhou uses a creative structure to both hold our interest and confuse us.
Gong Li is Zhou Yu, a painter at a porcelian factory who captures the heart of a poet, played by Honglei Sun. She is in a city, he in the country, and she rides the train twice a week to see him. Complicating matters for them is a veternarian, Tony Leung Ka Fai, also in love with Li. Complicating matters for us is Li's other role as a woman who is studying the poet years after the affair, not to mention the way the story jumps about in time.
The characters are all vaguely interesting but we never truly get to know the painter or poet, and so never gain insights into their often strange courtship.
The story ends badly, as all romances should, but in a heavy-handed way and we're left wondering, like Li's second persona, what the heck just happened.