Hou Hsiao Hsien's chunk of pre-war Taiwanese life is based on the autobiography of puppetmaster Li Tien Lu, with a voiceover provided by the canny old codger himself. Puppetmaster Li's knack behind the curtain is first noticed by a puppet troupe which "buys" him from his father. Later the sullen, laconic Li (Lin Chung) hitches up with a hooker and switches to acting when Chinese culture is crossed off the menu, hangs out in the mountains and is then recruited as a propaganda puppeteer by the occupying Japanese military.
Amid the titbits of activity the movie just about illustrates a life with no control. However, the tragedies that might have touched us the death of close relatives, the abuse meted out by Li's stepmother (Yang Li-Yin), a nasty dose of malaria occur almost always in long-shot. The shadow of Japanisation looms there's an order for pigtails to be lopped off and a reprimand to Li's son for catching an uncatchable fish but the disjointed narrative structure leaves no indelible feeling of what it must have meant to have your strings jiggled by a foreign power.
Stubbornly sluggish and as serious as a final-term dissertation, the drama is lightened by snatches of vaguely bawdy deadpan humour in the beret-bonced octogenarian's direct-to-camera anecdotes, and it is left to the glimpses of puppetry to provide the film's few infusions of colour and energy.