Electric Shadows

Electric Shadows is a 2004 Chinese film directed by Xiao Jiang. The English title of the film is the literal translation for the Chinese term for movies or dian ying .

Mao Xiaobing Xia Yu, a water bottle delivery boy in Beijing, loves to watch movies. One day, however, while riding his bike, he is attacked by LingLing Qi Zhongyang, a disturbed young woman, that lands him in the hospital. LingLing is promptly arrested, but refuses to say why she attacked Mao Xiaobing, asking him only to feed her fish. Upon entering her apartment, however, Mao Xiaobing finds that LingLing has created a veritable shrine to the 1930s film star, Zhou Xuan. When he stumbles upon her diary and begins reading, the film flashes back to LingLings mother as a young woman in Ningxia.Her mother had been working in radio when she became pregnant and subsequently abandoned by her lover. Branded a counterrevolutionary, she travels to the countryside where she befriends Pan, a movieprojectionist where the two eventually marry. LingLing meanwhile, thinks that her real father is a movie star of Zhou Xuans era. Mao Xiaobing had been hit by his father, and so LingLings mother took care of him for some days. When LingLings mother and Pan marry, Mao Xiaobing had been sent away to live with relatives by his father because Mao had been a troublemaker. LingLing later recalls the time they were apart as miserable, saying also that the arrival of her younger brother was disgusting. Despite that, it is later revealed that LingLing learns to accept her younger brother, but the acceptance is short lived. Mao Xiaobing later realizes that she has been watching over her parents, and after tracking down the old couple, he asks why LingLing is now deaf. Recalling the events, Pan explains that BingBing LingLings younger brother had lied to their mother to get LingLing out of the house. Both of them then went up to the rooftop where she and Mao Xiaobing would watch the movies through his binoculars. After saying she would leave, BingBing begs her not to leave, but then falls to the ground. Pan then hits LingLing for her brothers death, leaving her deaf in both ears. ........

Source: Wikipedia