I am a huge fan of the American film Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls/Koch, 1948), so I was ready to be sort of defensive about this one. But I must admit it is really very very good. One reason I don't mind having another version is that this one is so different. While the 1948 version is squarely in the romantic tradition, this film is very realistic. It is also much closer to the Stefan Zweig short story that both films are based on. The best thing about it I think is the amazingly convincing portrayal of a character who ages from her early teens to her early thirties. I have never seen that sort of thing done so well. The one flaw, I think, is the casting of Wen Jiang as the man who is the object of the woman's erotic obsession. He just doesn't have the magnetism to get us to sympathize with her fixation on him. But then, maybe we aren't supposed to.
Review of Yi ge mo sheng nu ren de lai xin
