Starring Yu Xia, Li Haibin, and Yihong Jiang. In Mandarin with English subtitles. Not rated. Plays Friday to Monday, February 3 to 6, at the Pacific Cinémathí¨que

The French and Italians still haven't come clean about their willingness to watch the wretched TV programs they produced in the 1960s and '70s, but the Chinese feel no such qualms about confessing their lingering fondness for the movies made during the Mao era. (Part of this could be a question of quality, of course; though often laughably propagandistic, Maoist movies did demonstrate a certain kitschy savoir faire.)

Like so many recent Mainland China features, Electric Shadows is a then-and-now piece about country mice who dream of becoming city rodents. Jiang Xiao's debut feature begins with busy Beijing bicycle courier Mao Dabing (Yu Xia) running down a troubled young woman named Ling Ling (Zhongyang Qi) in a relatively minor accident that nonetheless sends the initially incensed Ling to hospital. Guilt drives Dabing to look after his victim's fish, an act of charity that opens him to the temptation of reading her lifelong diary, a perusal that reveals these young people have more in common than he'd originally thought.

It also conjures up memories of Dabing's long-forgotten hometown, Ningxia. Life in this provincial town was not pleasant, being enlivened primarily by the viewing of movies approved by the local authorities. In contemporary Chinese cinema, it is now acceptable to show how the Cultural Revolution ruined lives but not how it terminated them, so the misery that we see is kept within politically acceptable parameters.

Nevertheless, Electric Shadows is an emotionally affecting film, and anything but esoteric. After all, even in our own world, how many people were saved from despair by the vicarious comforts offered by Seinfeld, Sex and the City, and Friends?