I watched this superb film last night and I really enjoyed it. It was beautifully written, well acted and very touching. The cinematography was visually stimulating.
"The beauty and tragedies of China's history are reflected in the lives of a handful of film fans in this historical drama. Mao Dabing (Xia Yu) is a delivery man working in a small village in rural China during the latter days of the Cultural Revolution. Mao is a movie fan who lives for the periodic outdoor screenings held in the town square, but he meets a bigger buff one day when, after he has an accident on his bicycle, he's assaulted by Ling-Ling (Qi Zhongyang), a cute but overly excitable young woman. After she's arrested, Ling-Ling gives the keys to her apartment to Mao and asks him to look after her fish while she's in jail; though puzzled, he agrees, and discovers her flat is a veritable museum of movie memorabilia.
Ling-Ling's favorite star is Zhou Xuan, a singer and actress who was a major screen idol in the 1930s and inspired Ling-Ling to take a stab at acting, and when Mao's curiosity gets the better of him he starts reading Ling-Ling's diary, discovering she grew up believing her father was a major male star of the era. However, the truth is far less glamorous."
