The movie follows a pair of male Beijing Opera performers, Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) andDuan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi), from their school days, in the nineteen-twenties and early thirties, to their farewell performance together, in 1977.
Duan (who plays warriors and kings) and Cheng (who plays the important female roles) have an ideal relationship onstage, but offstage they often seem less like mythic lovers than like miserable, muddling-through partners in an arranged marriage.