Letter from an Unknown Woman

Beijing, 1948. A man comes home and finds a long letter waiting for him. It was written by a woman, and he does not remember her. She tells eighteen years, starting from the day she first saw her new neighbour when she was thirteen: the war, the partings, the meetings again. He failed to recognise her every time. Xu Jinglei directed the film and played the woman; Jiang Wen plays the man. The source is Stefan Zweig's novella of the same name. Xu takes the story out of Europe and moves it to China's war years, handing the telling over entirely to the woman's voice. The images are calm and the music heavy; the film delivers feeling not by raising its voice but by letting it accumulate.