Xiao-Kang, a young man who lives a dismal life with his parents in their small Taipei apartment, develops a terrible pain in his neck which no doctor, nor cure can seem to relieve. His mother is having an affair with a man who pirates pornographic videotapes, while his father is pursuing a solitary quest for pleasure in the city's gay bathhouses. Somehow, Xiao-Kang's pain seems to reflect the problems of each of his parents, and the solutions to each seem connected also, in a way that is not rationally explicable.