[7] In 1999 Fenyang, 25-year-old shopkeeper Tao finds herself in a love-triangle between Liangzi, a good friend and poor laborer in a local coal mine who has unrequited feelings for her, and Jinsheng, a well-off gas station owner who, despite being pompous and cruel, she is more attracted to.

He meets Mia, his Chinese language teacher, an older woman for whom he develops feelings and eventually begins a relationship with.

Dollar shares with Mia how he still carries the keys his mother gave him when he was a young boy, and that he fears she may die even though they have not talked for years.

[9] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote, "Jia Zhang-ke’s Mountains May Depart is a mysterious and in its way staggeringly ambitious piece of work from a film-maker whose creativity is evolving before our eyes.

"[10] Scott Foundas of Variety states "Mountains May Depart is never less than a work of soaring ambition and deeply felt humanism, as Jia longs not so much to turn back the hands of time, but to ever so slightly slow them down.