In a small, slow-moving port town in southern Taiwan, two lonely youths dream of breaking free from a life that feels endlessly repetitive and unkind. The film’s first half blends light humor with a sense of unease as the world around them remains drab and colorless. For Ah-gui, the child whose perspective anchors much of this story, the environment is constantly frustrating: a place where the ordinary can feel crushing, and where color seems to elude her sight. Her grandmother, Grandma, steps in with care, taking her to a local shaman who tries to read the ache in her life. The shaman’s verdict is enigmatic: her spirit has wandered, but will return once she grows up. This sense of being somehow apart from the world is reinforced by the truth that Ah-gui is color-blind, a detail that threads through her attempts to interpret everything around her.
The person she admires most is her cousin, Ah-hsian, a charismatic dreamer who fills the ordinary with possibilities. He imagines travel as a grand, endless voyage, drawing on a bookshelf full of travel guides to conjure far-off places and odd encounters. His stories become a lifeline for Ah-gui, a way to slip out of their quiet town into a realm where difference feels like a doorway rather than a wall. A turning point arrives when Ah-hsian meets a Japanese tourist traveling alone. The cousin’s imagination expands as he brings Ah-gui into one late-night moment at the school, as he carries mosquito repellant to the guest staying in an extra room. She witnesses part of an intimate encounter between them, and the memory lingers. When the tourist departs the next day, a changed Ah-hsian seems to emerge, and so too does a brighter, more vulnerable version of Ah-gui.
Years pass, and Ah-gui grows into a young woman who still struggles with life’s practicalities and her disability. She enrolls in a cosmetology program, but instructors, and even Ah-hsian, harshly test her progress. Yet the cousins’ dream never truly fades. Ah-hsian remains a romantic at heart, with “True Love” as his guiding goal, and he invites Ah-gui to join him on a long harbor date with his new partner. The evening unfolds with tension and unspoken questions, and Ah-gui returns home unsettled, a small moment that foreshadows larger storms ahead. She even borrows money from Ah-hsian to replace a replaced mannequin, but when he pushes for repayment, she refuses to be tied to him by debt. A little later, she discovers money tucked away by her uncle, a small echo of the world’s unpredictability and temptation. To plan a future that might fit her colors and her life, she seeks help from a travel agent, hoping to chart a path to an island in the Pacific where color-blind people are said to belong.
Both Ah-gui and Ah-hsian learn a hard lesson: no amount of planning or dreaming can shield you from the consequences of careless, painful choices. Ah-gui uncovers the truth of a betrayal when she sees Ah-hsian’s boyfriend with another person, and a fight erupts. The moment intensifies as Ah-hsian breaks down in the church confessional, delivering an almost lyrical soliloquy in English that echoes E. E. Cummings’ Somewhere I have Never Traveled, a moment that hints at tragedy. Then, in a single, devastating knock on the door, a voice cries out, “Come quick, Ah-hsian has killed himself.” Rushing to the hospital, Ah-gui tells the comatose Ah-hsian how disappointed she is and asks who will carry her away now that he cannot.
The film closes with a quiet, almost ceremonial image of domestic life and memory. Ah-gui visits her cousin in the hospital, trying to coax him back to life with the games they once played as children. At home, her grandmother makes umbrellas, and the moment becomes a tender symbol of choice and resilience: Ah-gui takes a yellow umbrella for herself while returning a blue one to her grandmother to hold. She twirls it as she looks toward the horizon, and softly, with a note of hope, she whispers to the world, “Look a rainbow.”
> Look a rainbow
