It happened in 1950s Taiwan, during the period known as the "White Terror," when an anti-Communist campaign swept up the island in hysteria. One autumn afternoon, two sisters returned from school to find their once-happy home ransacked by military police and their parents arrested and accused of being Communist spies. The film follows a quartet of characters - the dashing air force officer father, his beautiful devoted wife, a mysterious scar-faced bureaucrat and a general's glamorous wife. Their lives and loves intertwine until everything erupts in a rhapsody. Amid life in that turbulent era, friendship, passion, high-minded ideals and dignity are all put on trial in the courtroom of human desire.