I first became aware of Fei Mu's masterly Chinese drama just over a decade ago, via a very intelligent and heartfelt modern remake/homage: Tian Zhuangzhuang's film Springtime in a Small Town. At that stage, I could only get hold of the original on a fuzzy VHS copy. So it is such a pleasure to see this big-screen re-release, written by Li Fianji and taken from his own short story, part of the BFI season celebrating a century of Chinese cinema.

It is a powerful, yet exquisitely subtle emotional drama, something to be compared with Ophüls, or Mizoguchi, or with a Hollywood studio picture by Douglas Sirk or an early David Lean. The resemblance to Henry James's The Golden Bowl or The Wings of the Dove is also notable. The depressed and hypochondriac Liyan (Shi Yu) lives in a provincial town in 1948, in a house still damaged by Japanese bombing in the war, and which he cannot afford to repair. He is depressed by these ruins and by the stagnancy of his marriage to the beautiful Yuwen (Wei Wei) from whom he has emotionally retreated. He is delighted when his old childhood friend Zhang (Li Wei), shows up to visit, a dynamic and personable doctor in a western-style suit.

Yet Liyan does not realise that he was a former lover of Yuwen's, and her demure manner turns into suppressed coquetry and passion; something like a clandestine affaire de coeur begins to flower between them, but oppressed by fear and guilt, they entertain the notion of a future wedding between Zhang and Yuwen's kid sister Xiu (Zhang Hongmei). For reasons no one can explain, everyone is drawn to taking walks by the ruined city wall. Perhaps there is something about damaged limits or vulnerable barriers. There is a captivating subtlety in the glances, smiles, brief hand-holdings; it has an inspired emotional fluency and candour. This is a film to fall in love with.