上海苏州河上，用摩托车替人送货的马达接下送接纯真少女牡丹的活，两人相处时，牡丹爱上马达，但就在她决定把终身托付给对方时，马达财迷心窍联合黑道朋友绑架了她，令牡丹心灰意冷跳进苏州河里。临跳前，牡丹丢下会变成美人鱼再寻马达的话。 五年后，为自己行为懊悔不迭的马达疑惑牡丹又回来了，开始四处找寻。当在某酒吧里看到扮美人鱼表演的美美时，马达认定她就是牡丹，然而美美不过是另一个痴情女子而已。

中国南方城市，建设委员会主任唐奕杰在一次拆迁纠纷冲突中意外坠楼身亡。年轻警官杨家栋开始调查，发现唐奕杰坠楼案与和他过从甚密的紫金企业负责人姜紫成，还有几年前紫金企业合伙人阿云失踪案都有着密切的关系。调查过程中，杨家栋被设局陷害，遭到停职。失踪的阿云则听说现身在命案现场。

同样以命案开场，娄烨继《浮城谜事》后再度以悬疑类型为体裁，时序横跨近三十年，足迹遍及两岸三地，透过一段三角关系，讲述了一段中国改革开放背景下，个人和家庭的命运轨迹。他亦透过今昔交错的叙事时序，巧妙暗示人物关系与推动剧情。摄影师包轩鸣首次与娄烨合作，捕捉了在钱、权、欲快速膨胀且空虚迷失的时代里，迷离又暧昧的人物关系。

IN SHANGHAI
In Shanghai Lou Ye, 2001
short Film
In Shanghai or the eyes of a Chinese director of his city, Shanghai, Communist economic center , but also megalopolis with many faces ...
Lou Ye is a great filmmaker. After having the success that we know for the sublime Suzhou River, the young director of the sixth generation is coupled to the design of this short film about Shanghai, the city of his heart , beautiful and multicultural . Camera in hand ( for lovers is a Sony DSR- PD150 DVCam ... ) for subjective , Lou Ye rhyme begins this urban plan by a girl asleep on a bed. Slowly the camera moves out of the suburb where this unknown young woman is given the arms of Morpheus , better visit this city that is Shanghai. The narrator who is also the hero says in voice-over that he loves this megalopolis . It focuses on the residents of these neighborhoods without cloth and without resources where most of the native population of Shanghai Lodge . Indeed the streets Zongshan Donglu which contains the Bund, Pudong, the famous Oriental Pearl is not the stock market and everyone. We must go farther Jingan District to discover the social wealth of this city . Why attach immense cold and nervous architectures while the Shanghai Blood flows through the veins of its rural ? It's a little message Lou Ye through this short film .
"You can guess who they are, but we can never really know "
Lou Ye eradicates a rare cinematic power of this often precarious and old people waiting on the bus every morning to go to work and make the Chinese economy humming .
The old streets of the city like the nearby temple Cheung Hong Bund to the bank of the Huangpu , the filmmaker does not recognize the city. As if all these steel towers of the 21st century had absorbed the social essence of the " Paris of the East" .
Lou Ye then takes us on a visit to the arcades , discos, clubs, dances, flashy locations and disconnected from the reality of ordinary people in the middle of poverty which is near workers and street vendors where people drown their defecation in water by putting the edge of an old tub ... This is a new look for the Western .
Finally, after making stops in a dangerous Shanghai streets by night , the hero wakes up in the morning director in a corner near buildings unsafe and fixed on the face of a shy child , concluding : "The only thing that matters is Shanghai . "
By these words Mr. Lou Ye, I bear you my esteem .