Equation of Love and Death (Li mi de cai xiang)

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Drama

A single day in the life of an unhappy young woman throws her into a vortex of strange coincidence in this black comedy from China.

Li Mi (Zhou Xun) is a street smart but nervous cab driver whose boyfriend Fang-Wen (Deng Chao) vanished four years ago; since then, she often finds herself asking her fares if they know anything about his whereabouts, usually to their puzzlement.

One day, Li Mi gives two of her passengers -- fidgety Qiu Huogui (Wang Yanhui) and lovelorn Qiu Shuitian (Wang Baoqiang) -- the third degree about Fang Wen; they pay with a large bill and she has to go to a shop to get change.

After a while, the passengers think she's run off with their money, and they retaliate by taking Li Mi's scrapbook of photos of Fang-Wen. Not long after a man who looks just like Fang-Wen dies in a bizarre accident, Li Mi crosses paths with Huogui and Shuitian again, who demand a ransom for the safe return of her collection of photos.

Unfortunately, she doesn't have the money to buy back the pictures, though the pieces of her strange day begin to fall into place when she's called upon to help a police detective (Zhang Hanyu) with an investigation.

Li Mi De Caixiang (aka The Equation of Love and Death) earned Cao Baoping the Best New Director award at the 2008 San Sebastian International Film Festival.