YI GE MO SHENG NU REN DE LAI XIN

Peking, 1948. A bleak winter night. A man rides through the war-ridden city and returns home. He finds a letter awaiting him. It is a letter written by a woman before her death. In the letter she tells him the story of her love for him a life-long passion that has not diminished over time, but one that he has never known. The womans story spans 18 years from the moment she then a 13-year-old girl sets her eyes on her dashing new neighbor. She tells their brief but passionate love in her youth, the hardship she goes through raising their child alone, and their final encounter after the war, during which the man fails to recognize her and one which leaves her in despair. Now having lost her son her only tie with the man she loves she no longer has the courage to live on. Only in a letter is she capable of telling him everything, for the first and last time. To make her second movie as a director, actress Xu Jinglei decided to adapt Stefan Zweigs novel, of which there already exists a splendid adaptation by Max Ophüls. Xu Jingleis point of view endows with numerous beautiful, sensitive, and intelligent moments, the tale of this unknown girl in love with an unsuspecting man tinged with the gentle sadness and nostalgia of a love that could have been but wasnt.