As their affair deepens, they face opposition and judgment from the local community, who disapprove of their relationship. The young girl's mother (played by Jeanne Moreau) also plays a significant role in the story, as she is aware of the relationship and seems to accept it.

And then, it happens. The wall she has built around herself for the entire film—the coolness, the cynicism, the pretense—shatters. She collapses onto her bunk, her body wracked with sobs. She cries not for what she lost, but for what she refused to acknowledge she ever had. She cries for the man in the white silk suit, the trembling hands, the shuttered room, the ritual of the baths. She realizes, with a clarity as sharp as a knife, that she loved him. That she had loved him all along. She cries until she has no tears left.

There is no romance, not at first. There is a trembling, fumbling urgency. He undresses her, his movements hesitant, almost reverent. She is still, passive, as if watching a scene from far away. He is shocked by her youth, by the fragility of her body. Their first coupling is awkward, almost brutal in its nervousness—a collision of loneliness rather than passion. He cries out, then lies still. She asks, "Do you do this often?" He says, "I don't know any other women."

The story begins with a young, unnamed French girl (played by ) traveling back to her boarding school. On a ferry crossing the Mekong, she meets an elegant Chinese man (portrayed by Tony Leung Ka-fai ), who offers her a ride in his chauffeured limousine.

The story revolves around a young woman, known as "the young girl" (played by Madeleine La Route), who lives in a small village in France during World War II. She is 15 years old and has just started to experience the complexities of adolescence.

She listens. She says nothing. But the camera holds her face, and you see it: the ghost of a smile, the glint of a tear. The film ends not with a reunion, but with a confession. It ends with the devastating, impossible truth that some loves don’t end. They just wait, in the dust and the darkness of a shuttered room on a forgotten street in Saigon, for a phone call that comes decades too late.

The film explores complex imbalances of age, race, and social class.