FOR sheer sensual pleasure there is nothing on the catwalk that can possibly rival it.

The frocks are gorgeous, the stunts mind-boggling, and the models are the most fashionable new stars in Asian cinema. The plot of course is pure corn, but you can’t have absolutely everything.

Welcome to Zhang Yimou’s ninth-century martial arts fable, House of Flying Daggers, a companion piece to his recent folklore epic Hero, and The Times’ gala film at this year’s London Film Festival.

House of Flying Daggers is an ancient tale of unrequited love wrapped around a medley of set pieces that wouldn’t look out of place in a modern Olympic gymnasium. It’s also one of the most magical pieces of story-telling to reach a screen in the past 12 months.

The characters are as slippery as eels in a bucket. The stakes are nothing less than the national security and future prosperity of China. And the romance is a dizzy, heartstopping fight for the hand of a blind peasant girl who belongs to a terrorist cell called the Flying Daggers — no idle gang handle.

The knife-throwing skills of these outlaws make the fairground wheel-of-death look like Playschool. Filmed at bullet-speed, one discovers that these embossed silver blades have lives of their own. They agonise like Hamlet on the way to the target: shall I delicately sever the windpipe, or merely split him like a fruit? It’s this almost philosophical — and distinctly Oriental — attitude to violence that elevates the film above a multitude of high-wire pretenders. It’s what Hollywood directors such as Quentin Tarantino aspire to without fully understanding the lore.

There’s a sense of completion with Zhang’s film. This is a genre that he’s been working in for a lifetime. He has history and culture on his side. The brittle romantic chemistry between the leads is utterly organic to the drama he paints.

The director’s politics might have become more dubious, reactionary even, but the art is sublime. The lead star, Zhang Ziyi, is on the roll of her life. She has become Zhang’s muse, and therefore without question the most important Asian actress on the arthouse circuit.

Using her dance skills, she charms and flirts with a surreally gifted police captain, Leo (Andy Lau). Knowing that Zhang Ziyi is instrumental to the rebel cause, he tasks his equally wily lieutenant, Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), to spring her from her medieval prison to lead the emperor’s troops to the rebel base. It’s a game of bluff, spiked with overt passion. Leo is a tight, middle-aged, Freudian hero. His unhealthy respect for the marked fugitive, and young Jin’s duty as her handsome betrayer, climaxes in a duel in which both men — best of friends — must decide the destiny of their country or the woman who bewitches their hearts.

The set-pieces are staggering, from the opening dance sequence in a brothel, to the lush bamboo forest where the Jin and his exotic blind bandit are finally trapped. The fact that they had to gallop across half of Ukraine to get the right fairytale forest is immaterial, apparently. Enjoy this film for what it is: a martial arts romance with cinematography to die for.