Summer Palace (2006) User Reviews

an intelligent film about obsessive love

[Buddy-51 · 8/10 · 22 March 2008]

In the late 1980's, an inexperienced young woman named Yu Hong leaves her hometown and boyfriend in the provinces to attend Beijing University. Almost immediately, she falls into a passionate love/hate relationship with a fellow student at the school. This torrid affair plays out partly against the backdrop of the student protests and subsequent massacre that occurred in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989. (The movie also takes place briefly in Germany, the other part of the world where significant social change was occurring in 1989).

"Summer Palace" plays almost like the autopsy of a romantic obsession, attempting to get at the root of why we love in the way that we do. A novice at true love, Yu Hong understands neither her undying passion for Zhou Wei nor her seemingly incessant need to keep sabotaging their relationship. The closest she can come to grasping this paradox is when she says to Zhou Wei: "I want to break up…because I can't leave you." Love is seen almost as a form of mental illness in this film - as a debilitating, all-consuming condition that one is powerless to control or "cure" but which, if left unchecked, can become the single dominant force in a person's life (we rarely see Yu Hong studying, let alone going to class). One can attempt to fill the void with other loves, but the heart always comes back to the same place.

"Summer Palace" is long and occasionally repetitious and the political aspects aren't as effectively integrated into the story as they perhaps might have been, but the movie is beautifully acted by Lei Hao and Xiaodong Guo, among others, and features incisive and sensitive direction by Ye Lou (who, along with Feng Mei and Ma Yingli, co-authored the screenplay). This is a largely impressionistic film, concentrating more on mood, imagery and emotions than on narrative. The last hour of the film - so filled with longing and regret as the characters age and attempt to come to terms with the special thing they have lost - is particularly lyrical and heartbreaking and will haunt you long after the movie is over.

All told, "Summer Palace" is an intelligent and moving rumination on that mysterious force we call love.

Banned in China: What Now, Lou Ye?

[janos451 · 7/10 · 16 March 2007]

Lou Ye's "Summer Palace" ("Yihe yuan") has plenty of frontal nudity and a fair number of (not very attractive) sex scenes, but that's not why the movie was banned by Beijing, and Ye forbidden to work in the film industry for five years.

More likely, official displeasure was incurred by the film's powerful recreation of the Tiananmen events of 1989, from the students' point of view - and, coincidentally, equaling Tolstoy's representation of the chaos of war in the Borodino scenes of "War and Peace." And yet, all that is besides the point.

Rather, after tonight's screening of "Summer Palace" in the Castro, at the 25th annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, your bewildered and overwhelmed reporter is positing this central question: whither Lou Ye? After those five years (or making movies elsewhere) will Ye become the new Zhang Yimou and China's best or just an imitator of the loathsome Tsai Ming-liang, teasing and torturing the audience... just because he can?

My money - and hope - is on the better scenario. However strange and convoluted and bizarre and frustrating "Summer Palace" may be, it appears "sincere" and not reaching for effect. It's a magnificent failure or a miserable masterpiece, a stupid soap opera or a splendid insight into the human condition - the choice is up to you; for me, it was all that, and more. Seen so far only at film festivals (Cannes, Toronto, Mill Valley, Pusan and Oslo), the film is due for release in France next month and not, so far, in the U.S.

Lack of commercial exposure may not be a bad thing. This is a "festival film," if there was ever one, and watching it on DVD may be the next best thing. If it came to theaters in this country, few people would go to see it, and of those, many would leave long before its conclusion 2 hours and 20 minutes later. And yet, and yet...

The script - also by Ye, apparently heavily autobiographical - follows a group of young people from their Beijing University days in the 1980s through the present. The central character is Yu Hong, a teenager from the countryside. As played by Lei Hao - with little of Zhang Ziyi's physical charms and a hundred times her acting ability - here is a cinematic heroine for the ages: a complex, puzzling, neurotic young woman with touching aspirations and scary unpredictability. Lei Hao becomes the character in a naked, unselfconscious, totally believable way - she alone make "Summer Palace" a must-see film (except that you can't).

Ye's way of telling the story is personal, iconoclastic, dragging here, speeding up there, taking us to Berlin (?!), unintentionally nonlinear, showing Yu Hong is similar situations time and again - and yet slowly spinning an intelligent, poetic subtext in the background.

Hard as it may be to imagine, "Summer Palace" has something in common with Alain Resnais' "Last Year in Marienbad," in its wistfulness, lack of specific believability and yet presenting a feeling that makes perfect "sense." There are a hundred things "wrong" with Ye's work and yet it's one of the more memorable films in years.

Not a Great Film but One that Says Something about China Today

[johnpetersca · 6/10 · 28 March 2008]

When I saw Summer Palace, I assumed initially that the title referred to a building near Tiananmen Square. A quick Internet search, however, showed that this is not the case. The Summer Palace (Yihe Yuan, literally The Garden of Good Health and Harmony) is an elaborate structure and garden in the hills near Beijing that was originally the emperor's summer residence. After more web searching, I discovered from a comment by Agora on the Flixster Website (http://www.flixster.com/movie/573373022) that the grounds of the Summer Palace are the location of an "intimate bonding moment" between the two university students who are the film's main characters. They are Yu Hong, a girl who has recently come from the country, and Zhou Wei, a more experienced member of the student intelligentsia.

All the same, I like the film's French title, Une Jeunesse Chinoise (A Young Chinese Girl) better. An esoteric but appropriate alternative would be La Française (The French Girl) in reference to Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 La Chinoise (The Chinese Girl). In Godard's film, a young French woman pretends to be a Chinese cultural revolutionary. In Summer Palace, a Chinese girl learns to pose as, among other things, a French intellectual.

The movie is indebted to the French New Wave in other ways as well, including use of real urban settings, choppy editing, and lots of sex. The sex is different from what we're used to. It's neither pornographic nor romantic. There are nude bodies, primarily those of the attractive Yu Hong and her sexual partners, and they perform with graphic intensity. There is, however, neither stimulation nor foreplay. The partners are undifferentiated and their positions conventional (though a shift, in later episodes, from the missionary position to sex with the woman on top may have some significance).

In other ways as well, I found it hard to relate to any of the movie's characters. Though they must all have worked very hard to be admitted to an elite Beijing university, there is no indication of their academic activities. A brief sequence of documentary footage shows the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and implies the subsequent massacre but there is nothing about planning or political intent. For the characters in the movie, political action seems no more than a momentary sensation as they go about their alienated lives.

Maybe this indifference is an inheritance of the Cultural Revolution. Mao went to great lengths to deprive his subjects of personal identities, including, at one point, an effort to replace names with numbers as a means of identification. It's also possible that there are things in the movie that I, as an American, just don't get. Still, I can think immediately of two memoirs, Jung Chang's Wild Swans and Anchee Min's Red Azalea, that portray individual Chinese characters in depth and with great effectiveness. These are things that director Ye Lou is not able to accomplish.

These comments should not be taken as excusing the Chinese government's banning Yihe Yuan from internal distribution and prohibiting Ye Lou from making films for five years. I asked the manager of the theater in which I saw the movie whether Lou had been imprisoned. "Not yet," he said. It should be kept in mind that the old men who still rule China have only been able to survive and prosper because they were once sycophants to the greatest mass murderer in human history.

Open Mind to the Movie - Summer Palace

[leech_74 · 6 May 2007]

Having watched the movie myself and reading some of the comments/reviews with regards to the movie prompted me to post something in fairness to the movie.

I feel that the movie was meant to let audience have a feeling that the leads in the movies are lost. If we were to think of the backdrop of the movie, set in the late 80's, Tiananmen incident, the chant for democracy, all this would have let you understand that the China then was not a China that many could understand.

The China up till the 80s was probably such a controlled and suppressed place to live in, and when these suppressed feelings and emotions were suddenly set free, it was like an explosion. The literature and external factors began influencing the way the people viewed and did things. This could explain the "mindless" love making scenes as the desires to love and to have sex were probably something that was not openly displayed or demonstrated. Freedom is what everyone wants, but the maturity to handle the consequence of the actions brought about by freedom might not be something that everyone can handle.

The movie also explores on people who dare not love. All because they fear losing it. I personally felt the characterization was done quite well, and was aptly shown by the character Yu Hong. Love is not something that can be explained logically or defined in any one way. The insight to the characters views and actions in this movie shows that clearly.

Summer Palace is a movie worth watching, but it might not be a movie that is for everyone. Keep an open mind and try and understand the time and country this movie is set in, you'd probably appreciate the movie much better that way.

A movie about love (and time?)

[tavira · 9/10 · 30 November 2008]

This film is about several Chinese people, about how they grow up and how time changes them. It is focused on one couple, the very intense passion that they feel for each other and the paths that life shows them in relation of what they feel in each step of their lives...

This movie is centered in love. More exactly, it is centered in the romantic view of life, which is destined to collide with the fact of growing up, because the characters in the film just can't manage to keep their passionate feelings while they start living other things after leaving university. It is as if life and circumstances pushes them to leave behind their memories, the anchor that seems to keep the characters living and knowing that they are someone. I think it is interesting how this is managed as the film goes by, because I recognized this feeling in myself and among my friends: about how, by leaving school, you have the feeling to be adrift in the universe of life.

Also, the passion that the characters feel becomes sedated by the tedium of their lives after school. I think the director tries to communicate that feeling: after university, the characters start to get bored with their lives, compared with what they lived in school. It is sad to look how the woman character struggles to keep that feeling alive, but always feeling depressed because she can't grasp that passion that just goes away. They travel, they meet other people, they get jobs, but simply it's not the same. This is also related to the student's protests in China, all the feelings and expectations they generate, and the disillusion they found when they have to confront the real world.

Finally, I think what the film communicates, is that every emotion, love, feeling or whatsoever, is seized by time. This is something that the characters just don't get and the reason of why they suffer: they can't accept that they are different from the ones that were young and passionate. Even in long marriages, couples have to reinvent themselves to keep together each other, or simply they fall in the arms of custom. This last thing is what the characters refuse to do, always trying to keep their feelings alive. But that's also the reason of why they suffer, especially the woman character: they live attached to their memories and they leave part of their identity in the past. I think that a phrase that is showed in the french movie "Irreversible" could fit perfectly on this one: TIME DESTROYS EVERYTHING. But in this film, this phrase applies in a more subtle way, in something that involves people's identities.

I liked the movie. It was one of those which you can't get out of your head for the rest of the day. The acting is good and the music is great. If there is something to criticize, is that the film is a little bit too long for what it express, specially at the second part of the film. I found other criticism unfounded: sex is an important part of the film, since it express passion, and it's definitely NOT a soap opera, because it doesn't have a happy ending and it has a message that you have to discover by thinking and feeling the film.

I recommend this one.

The Dry Summer of Our Times

[samuelding85 · 6/10 · 5 May 2007]

What is the rationale for director Lou Ye to name the movie Summer Palace, or known as Yi He Yuan in Mandarin? Perhaps it is because, the story begins with a girl named Yu Hong (Hao Lei) who was sharing her passionate moments with her boyfriend Xiao Jun at Tumen, a rural area at the border between China and North Korea in the 80's, before leaving the hometown to study in a university in Beijing.

And perhaps it is because when her new friend, Li Ti, introduces Zhou Wei (Guo Xiao Dong) to her, that makes Yu Hong and Zhou Wei falling in love with each other instantly, that they spend their summer in dormitory, having endless sex. Their relationship has been going on and off during this period, until the Tiananmen incident broke out in 1989, which causes deaths to hundreds of university students in China.

For that, you have seen half of the story. And yes, that is what we get for Summer Palace, without seeing much direct relationship between the famous imperial palace and the love and sex of a young couple.

As what Yu Hong said in her diary, she is excited to meet new guys, but always ends up having sex with them as she thinks of her first time meeting Zhou Wei. The message we received from her was: sex has been an outlet to release her fear and anxiety, together with the love she still holds for Zhou Wei.

Lou Ye has explained the inner world of Yu Hong in the first half of the story. But the second half seems to drag the movie down. The movie continues with the government declaring an state of emergency during the Tiananmen incident, and it was fast forward to the year 1998, with footages of several incidents that took place in China and the communist country in the world. The next moment, we see how Yu Hong and Zhou Wei lead their individual life in ShenZhen and Berlin respectively, without much explanation on what has happened to them throughout the years.

To make the dry spell more unbearable, the 140 minutes drama lacks a solid detail to support a good storyline. Not much details were explained, which makes the movie pretty dull and draggy. The sex scenes featured in the film also makes it seems to be a cheap pornographic production. But, to the filmmakers in China, Summer Palace is the first made in China production that openly explores sex, which is very rare. The explicitness of the scenes has made Summer Palace the first movie in China that is challenging the censors of China. (Which explains why the movie was banned in China for discussion of Tiananmen incident, tonnes of sex scenes and participating in Cannes Film Festival without approval from the authorities.) The summer could be enjoyable if more juices can be provided in the palace.

The naked truth, blemishes included

[sitenoise · 10/10 · 6 May 2009]

"Because it is only when we make love that you understand that I'm gentle."

That's all the character development I need. This is an ambitious film about the stalled maturation of an idealistic but troubled young woman flanked by the Tiananmen Square protests, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China. The film spans a decade and a half from 1987 to 2003 so I guess the misery of Three Gorges Dam couldn't make the final cut. The direction is a little chaotic at times but it reflects the nature of the film and doesn't come off as too much of a liability. The soundtrack is impeccably chosen and the film is ultimately very sad. I was glued to this 140 minute masterpiece. Politics aside, and they are on the side, this is a remarkable film in its honest portrayal of failure, not of personal character necessarily, but of circumstance.

This is another film that got its director and producer banned for five years from making films in China. Maybe it's the full-frontal nudity or the sheer quantity of sex scenes but I don't see the need for hubbub. The film is about a woman's self-reflection on why she finds comfort in the arms of different men. We see her naked inside and out. She is afraid to love out of fear, fear of something she hasn't yet experienced, but isn't that the scariest kind of fear?

There are a number of things wrong with the film, perhaps, but very little could be done to improve it. Great films succeed in spite of their weaknesses. I'm not a fan of off camera narration but it works for me here. It seems additional rather than necessary. There is a maturity to the woman's voice as she narrates with entries from her diary that compliment, do not seem at odds with, the can't quite grow up activities of the woman on screen. In order to get from the Berlin Wall to the Hong Kong Handover, 1989 to 1997, we're treated to narrative on screen text to fill us in on what's happening to the characters. Ordinarily that would be a deal breaker for me, in theory at least, but again, it works. Finally, as if this were a real story about real people, after the final denouement occurs we're given updates on what happened or didn't happen to the principle characters. Frankly, as gut-wrenchingly sad but true as the final scene is I wish it would have just faded to black. But I think it's a tribute to the strength of the characters that I found myself intrigued by the postscript.

Having said that, I think one could argue that from a strictly script perspective a little more fleshing out was in order ... and I don't mean that full-frontally. I think it comes down to this: if you've ever known passionate, poetic, misguided people, you know these people right away. They're part beautiful and part brutal, there's no talking them out of it. That's the point. This film doesn't set out to explain, diagnose, or change its characters. It just wants to show them to you in all their painful glory, and I think it does a very good job of it. Then again, maybe it's just a case of been there, done that.

A fascinating portrait of modern Chinese youth

[blearned-1 · 7/10 · 6 May 2008]

I thought this film was a fascinating portrait of Chinese youth and culture, as they struggle through some astoundingly turbulent times. Coming into maturity while defining love, commitment, and one's self is a challenging part of any youth's life, but all the more so as part of a society that is struggling through the same challenges itself. I found interesting analogies of the Chinese village in the character of Yu Huong, and the big city in Zhou Wei. Somewhere around college age, we all attempt to define what is important to us and explore what we can do, can be, and want. Some of that experience is sorting through our history - family, village, cultural - and deciding what we want to carry forward and embrace, and what to rebel against and discard, and I believe that this film paints a lovely, if gritty, portrayal of modern China doing just that. In their dorm rooms, in the bars and restaurants, in their homes, in their hearts. On the one hand, I would have, aesthetically, enjoyed a more sumptuous, smooth production; but that is not modern China. China (what admittedly little of it I've seen) is gritty, sweaty, crowded, noisy, straining, and that's what I see in this film.

Beijing student girl in love - for romantics and young of heart

[ridleyrules · 9/10 · 5 February 2007]

I saw this movie at the 2007 International Film Festival of Rotterdam. The director was present at the screening for a Q&A.

Plot Summary (beginning only): China in the late 1980's. Yu Hong, a 17-year old girl leaves her boyfriend and father to go studying in Beijing. She befriends a girl who stays in a dorm across the hall. They go out dancing with her boyfriend and another friend, Zhou Wei. She soon knows: this is the love of her life.

This is the start of a story about love, mostly from the viewpoint of Yu Hong, the girl. We get insight into her thoughts as she reads from her diary in a voice-over. The love story is set against the student protests on Tiananmen Square. The protests and riots set off a change in the lives of all the main characters. We skip through time and return with them in the late 1990's.

Summer Palace has a lot to say during its 140 minutes. Becoming an adult in the 80's and 90's in China, student life, friendship, sex and most of all love. The language alternates between high-sounding diary thoughts and realistic taken-from-life dialogs. The photography varies from poetic "print it and hang it on the wall" quality to a grittier style, e.g. during the riots.

I really liked how the director fit love making scenes so integral into the movie. In most movies, scenes suddenly stop to ensure a good MPAA-rating. Or the camera pans and zooms unnaturally to keep the 'dirty parts' out of view. Here, director Lou Ye keeps things flowing to simply tell the full story of two people during all stages of their relation. Notice for instance how Yu Hong's love making changes as the story progresses.

This, and other elements such as "defining love" and the background of political turmoil brought back memories of Philip Kaufnan's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, based on Milan Kundera's book. I must admit that TULoB (the 1988 movie) made more impact on me when I first saw it than Summer Palace does now. But this different ranking may also be the result of my cultural background (I am European), age or maturity.

This movie may speak more to the young of heart and the romantics. A bit to my surprise, the few people that I saw leaving the theater prematurely were all 50+. This movie can split audiences, I guess. Some will ravingly love it, but it may leave others unaffected. People who belong to the latter group, will probably also think that the movie is too slow or too long. I base this on comments that I have read and heard at the festival.

I probably want to see this movie again. some time soon. The images and music are worth experiencing another time. Also, at times the pace of events is quite high, so it may help me to capture all of it better.

I rate this movie as one of the highlights of the festival: It's probably also the best movie from China that I have seen in the last two years: 9/10.

Crew Trivia: Cinematographer Qing Hua was a classmate in film school of Yu Wang, the director of photography of Suzhou River (the director's breakthrough film). Qing Hua was recommended by Yu Wang when he was unavailable.

Title Trivia: Summer Palace is the name of one of the buildings at Tiananmen Square. According to the director, the events at the square mark a change in the lives of the main characters.

Connection Trivia: Asked about being influenced or inspired by "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", director Lou Ye says that he is a big admirer of Kundera's novel, not so much the film adaptation.

Screenplay Trivia: Asked about the possible difficulty of having a young woman being the center of the story, director / screenwriter Lou Ye says that it made it actually easier. With a female main character, it was more natural for him to talk about love and emotions.

Life's Moments

[nabil-kokash · 7/10 · 6 January 2023]

You either you love this movie with its dramatic effect & impact on one's life experiences, or you hate it due to its cultural & prolonged emotional differences. Love is in a swinging mood. Breaking hearts as it moves along. Physical needs was a necessity but was not enough to sustain the emotional needs.

The performance was brilliant but it left a lump in my throat as I was looking for a relief along the way. Desperately looking for reconciliation, some sort of satisfaction in the time when freedom was questionable. The background music was sustainable with mood of the movie. Happy, joyful, & thematic as it swings from scene to scene.

The director must have had great influences in creating this movie, whether his own, his friends or through the lens of life. He managed to capture certain moments that We all thought, lived, or dreamt of it, and left it in the distance past.

Chinese girl leaves her home to Beijing University... and gets lost. So does the film

[michael_chaplan · 5/10 · 4 April 2008]

A girl leaves her home in a provincial city to attend university. She was in a sex relation; it was a good excuse to escape that. She is a poet, and her poetry seemed interesting in English translation...When she arrives in Beijing, she meets lots of people... and soon falls into a sexual relationship. She seems to be the sort of person who cannot connect to others otherwise. She gets a real boyfriend... but their relationship seems about to break up when the big demonstrations of June the second start in Beijing. While neither of the lovers has any interest in politics, the girl is obviously unhappy... her boyfriend from her home town comes to "rescue" her just as the police move in.

If the film had ended there, it would have been excellent. The focus remained on the girl up to that point.

Unfortunately, the film started to follow other characters and went on for the rest of the film discussing them. These people and their relationships were uninteresting. The film which had begun well with a clear focus ended up scattered and pointless. When the movie was over, I didn't even care about the woman who had been the focus at the beginning. I was just glad it was over with.

As the first half was excellent, I gave the film 5 of 10 stars.

Excitement in Beijing

[Chris Knipp · 8/10 · 18 February 2008]

This Cannes Festival 2006 entry by the director of Suzhou River and Purple Butterfly (enjoyng very limited US theatrical release in early 2008) is more unwieldy but also bolder and more authentic than its predecessors, while still as moony and emotional and indebted to Wong Kar-wai and the French New Wave. You could compare this to Dr. Zhivago or Splendor in the Grass but despite its intense period flavor at times--the cluttered dorm rooms stay with you as do the rushing demonstrators, and the progression from bikes to nice cars and email is subtle but unmistakable--it hasn't got the structure or plot of the usual generation-spanning films; it's a hymn to love-longing posing as a contemporary historical epic. As such, it's poised for failure and doomed to be dismissed by many. But it's really great fun, a fluent, flowing, committed film with more to think about and respond to than much better-made and more tightly-edited work. And after it was shown at Cannes without official permission from home, it got Lou banned from film-making in China for five years.

Full of intense realistic sex and frontal nudity that would be daring anywhere not to mention China , Summer Palace focuses on a passionate young woman who comes from the country to study at Beijing University just before the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and massacre of 1988, and though it brilliantly evokes the excitement, freedom, and experimentation of that period for what is essentially the director's own generation (Purple Butterfly dealt with the 1930's), and it gives a sense of the chaos and horror that follows--this extended, breathtaking Tiananmen-period sequence is a tour de force--the politics are peripheral to protagonist Yu Hong (Hao Lei) and the intense love addiction she shares with Zhu Wei (Guo Xiaodong). But when the repression comes, Xiao Jun (Cui Lin), Yu Hong's high school boyfriend, with whom she had intense sex at the film's outset, comes to rescue her and take her back to Tumen, in the country. The turbulent give and take of man-woman relationships is as intense at times as anything in D.H. Lawrence, but with a sexual explicitness Lawrence achieved only in Lady Chatterley.

As played by the striking and talented Hao Lei, Yu Hong is a hell of a young woman, beautiful, alive, articulate, philosophical--her diary provides voice-over for many of the film's scenes--willful, and never satisfied with Zhou Wei, but never able till the end (fourteen years later) to let him go either. She doesn't want him, she says, but when she is with him she is happy. Any critique of the movie has to recognize that this is what it's about.

It's quite true that (once again) rain is used excessively, but like many a filmmaker before him Lou Ye recognizes that rain, cigarettes, alcohol and intense sex by good looking people are enough to make a movie atmospheric and sexy and compulsively watchable. Jaunty Chinese pop songs and bursts of passionate classical strings are used with a broad hand, but they always work in context.

Summer Palace is too long, and its wild abandon catches up with it in the diffuse, occasionally irrelevant sequences of the second half. When the political repression comes and Wei goes to Berlin along with Hong's best girlfriend Li Ti (Hu Lingling) and her boyfriend Ryi Gu (Zhang Ziannin), and there are details of the fall of the Berlin Wall and Perestroika that have far less urgency, the whole mood dissipates and the focus meanders. Hong, who's already caught Li Ti with the love of her life Zhou Wei, drifts or rather plunges greedily from one man to another. There's an abortion, a bike accident, adultery, a suicide, and other events, including a bittersweet reunion, but these are just blips in the long meditation on love-longing and life.

Shown at Cinema Village in New York City January-February 2008.

This movie doesn't felt like a summer palace. It felt more like falling in a dark, wet and gloomy sinkhole. It's downright depressing.

[ironhorse_iv · 6/10 · 4 March 2017]

I really wanted to like this fictional movie from director Lou Ye. After all, I can understanding that falling in love is indeed strange, confusing, and beyond anybody understanding, besides the lover, but after watching this movie, I can say, this movie is not watchable. It's just too bland and somewhat unpleasant. We get it, Lou Ye! Falling in love and living in Communist China is indeed misery. I don't think, a highly repetitive movie with no character development about the passionate but volatile love affairs of an unstable young woman, Yu Hong (Hao Yei) was needed. After all, dealing with real-life is depressing enough, so why the audience waste time, watching more of that negative BS in reel-life. Don't get me wrong, I was going to stand by this movie, even if I'm going to stand alone, if the character disaffection with society and her use of sex as a substitute for contentment, led somewhere. Sadly, it does not. In the end, the movie about a woman's self-reflection on why she couldn't comfort in the arms of different lovers led nowhere, and was pretty much pointless as it didn't solve any of her mental problems. It doesn't help that the tone for this film really horrible. Barely any scenes that seem lovely, even when Hong isn't crying or being overdramatic. It doesn't help the audience that the sex scenes are not made to look romantic at all, with the undifferentiated partners, barely haven't any stimulation, while going at it. For a film to be one of the first from mainland China to feature the full-frontal adult nudity of both its male and female leads; it just felt too tame to care about their relationships. While, I have to say, Hao Yei is a great actress, the material that she was given, was just below average. Plus, it was a bit odd that Lou Ye pick Hao Yei, because she turn him down, fearing the sex scenes would hurt her love relationship. It's equally as weird as the entire crew had to waited patiently for Hao to accept, for so long that the original choice for Zhou Wei, Liu Ye, had to abandon the project. Hao was very touched by Lou Ye's actions and agreed, request to but her relationship with actor Deng Chao did end as a result. Still, I have to question if this was a great choice for Hao. After all, it's not really a realistic picture of the student life, here, because, all her character was doing was having sex and moaning about it. In my opinion, I think Lou Ye, pretty much exploit Hao Yei. Why, because ask yourselves, this, when did her character, get any time to study!? It doesn't help the movie that Hong's political views are never, truly explored as well. So, when the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, came. It seem to come, out of the blue for Hong to want to join. Though footage of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations are indeed spliced in among the dramatized imagery. Seeing, how there was no appearance of Hong talking to any of the key student leaders, or her, at the Square, protesting. It felt like a waste of time. I get that, the political movement was no more than a momentary sensation hiccup for Hong as she go on with her alienated most self-centered live, but couldn't they portray it, better than, just a few brief sequence of Hong's friends checking out the streets, while Hong moans. Don't get me wrong, Hu Lingling & Guo Xiaodong were fine as Hong's friends, Li-Ti and Zhou Wei, but it was a really sad portrayal of key event in China history. It felt a little bit shoehorn, seeing how it barely affect Hong's life like the scenes in Germany. To add insult to the misery; the movie doesn't really do a good job capturing life in China during the Cold War at all. The clothes, the schools, and the sites, just doesn't look like 1980's Beijing. Perhaps, the most jarring thing in this film, has to be, hearing western style music in bars, where all the characters go to. I really doubt that. Another thing, that hurt this film for me, is how badly shot, it was. Hua Qing is a really bad, cinematographer. It was really blurry at parts, or way too pitch black. I can barely see, what's going on. Yet, another problem, this movie has, is really bad pacing with a 140 minute running time. It takes forever to get anywhere. Overall: I get that this coming to age movie was going for a French New Wave feel to it, with Hong, narrating her life in somewhat a poetic way, but I had to say, it kinda failed. It felt tame compared to other Western dramas from Cannes Film Festival, that year. It's just not as good as certain critics think it is. While, I do understand, why the Chinese government banned this movie, due to the sex scenes and political undertones. I just don't see, why people should still see this movie. It's just painful to watch. Sadly, because of that. I just can't recommended seeing.

sexploitation (circa 1975), tedious, a few seconds of poetry

[Celluloid_Image · 3/10 · 19 March 2008]

I received a promotional pass to see this film and went without knowing any of surrounding hype, "controversy" or baggage it supposedly brings with it. I have generally like most Chinese films, especially those by Zhang Yamou, so I thought I'd give it a viewing.

*Warning* Many Spoilers Follow *

OK, this must be made clear at the outset. If you like dim lit naked bodies and lots of sex with a Chinese twist, this movie may be worth your price of admission. But if you would like to get a bit more out of a film, be prepared to endure painfully long minutes (hours) of wordless, earnest look scenes for a few brief gems of poetic insight and genuinely interesting philosophical questions.

It starts off in an interesting way with a young girl living in a small town who has just learned she has is accepted to the prestigious Beijing University. Bright lights, big city, here she comes! Cool, high-fives all around from the neighbors and a funny scene where she watches her "boyfriend" get drunk to cover his sadness at her leaving. Long, no, make that very very long interludes with absolutely no dialog follow, but on the up side the actors do convey quite a bit of emotion with their facial expressions. The girl and her friend end up in some out of the way place and suddenly she decides they should "do it" before she takes off for the big city ...cut to long scene of furious (and apparently inexperienced) humping in the dirt ....just the first of many such scenes.

Fade to Beijing where the girl is now a freshman student and her friends tease her because she doesn't have a boyfriend. That soon ends when her girlfriend's fiancée just back from Germany brings a friend along. Speed through a couple of scenes of cute dancing, long walks, and earnest serious stares with absolutely no dialog .... then cut to some more furious humping. Many more incredibly long, one-take scenes follow, often with serious intended voice overs and some poetic prose, but very little action .... until, well you guessed it, more double-backed beast time. Are you starting to see the pattern here? This film drags on for nearly two and one-half hours, covers a time period of approximately 14 years from 1987 to 2001, and does so with perhaps the least amount of dialog between characters that I can remember. There are plenty of voice-over thoughts, dreams and fears expressed, just like we were reading a novel. But don't worry, if you doze off there will always be yet another steamy, rabbits-going-at-it sex scene to wake you up.

Five out of ten, and I'm being kind.

Emotionally damaged me

[p-25187 · 9/10 · 21 June 2022]

A story of an idealist. Actually I can't understand why the character considered love as such an important thing but I do feel the bitterness and the pain. The ending stung my heart so hard and I failed to fall asleep after I finished the movie. I failed to analyze the lines and the plots but I did feel the story. I felt what Yu Hong felt, and her feelings hurt me.

This is a movie about love

[h-73787-27255 · 7/10 · 4 October 2022]

The first half of the movie is a snapshot of the life of young people in those years. What happened 1989 is important to this movie, but it's not important in a way that some would expect. This is not the movie for seeking for the truth of 1989. But this year matters because that's when the stories were happening. The change of the country and the world is with the change of the people in this movie. Young people were hopeful at first, and then some of them got lost. Love is the meaning of life for the two women, but they faced it in different ways. When love is not there and the meaning of the life is gone, do you face it and live without it for not fearing of the reality or do you give up your life for not fearing of the death? Maybe there is no right answer. Li Ti and Yu Hong are simply two sides of a coin.

"Whether there is freedom and love or not, in death, everyone is equal. I hope the death is not your end. You adored the light, you will never fear the darkness."

I love Hao Lei's performance in this movie. It feels like she is Yu Hong. She is tough and resilient, straightforward and brave. I also love the musics. They beautifully conveyed the emotions and feeling.

It is a very bold movie. They way it touched politics and showed sex makes it the most unique Chinese movie I've watched. But it is a little slow in the second half as some other review mentioned, which is a downside. So a good movie, but not great.

made by a genius

[Moviespot · 10/10 · 4 November 2009]

This film caught me from the moment it started at my screen. we see a young girl encountering her first experiences with love and sex.set at the decor of the huge changes China is undergoing in the mid-eighties.She is excepted at university and meets a handsome guy she's so overpowering in love with , it's scary...wow , the acting , directing ,editing, photography...is breathtaking..the story sometimes heartbreaking..trough sidesteps we are witnessing the student uproar at tianamen square etc.the 2 main characters loose sight of each other and we follow moments of their separate lives.. A breathtaking lovestory about love so strong , it hurts. definitely worth watching.

A history that cannot be mentioned

[hellofuture0825 · 7/10 · 19 July 2021]

Yuhong's acting skills are very good, and the history will not be erased.

a great success

[athena-no-sainto · 10/10 · 27 November 2011]

Lou ye's film summer palace is really a good exercise of great cinema, that kind of movie makes you think about it even after have watched it..Is one of those films that I call hard to watch, there are too much pain in it, but that is what in art I always call, find the beauty of the sadness, when a film can make you feel different kind of emotions means that the movie have succeed and summer palace is a great success...for me is hard to understand the girl's mind in that film,because the whole movie she seems lost, looks like she is unable to be happy and when she can be, she avoid it...same happen with some of the other characters of the film..this film can be classified like a tragedy without hope

A Nutshell Review: Summer Palace

[DICK STEEL · 1/10 · 5 May 2007]

Continuing my weekend of R21 movies, given that almost every screen in Singapore is showing Spider-Man 3 at the moment, and gives a clear indication on how the other blockbusters in the next 2 months will be treated as well. The Passion was a disappointment, and Summer Palace, somehow didn't live up to its hype, probably drawing curious audiences by the banning of its director Lou Ye from making films in the Mainland for the next 5 years, because he had failed to obtain official permission before screening Summer Palace overseas.

In any case, the same old marketing gimmick was to hype that this as the most erotic movie from China, and naturally drew audiences in like bees to honey. I've long classified broadly that movies of the romance genre can usually be grouped into the romantic comedies which Hollywood does well enough, and the romantic tragedies which try to bring out those tears. I've forgotten one more group, so add this to the broad classification now - those that want to titillate. Summer Palace attempts to explore relationships from its leads against the historical backdrop of change in China, but falls flat and seemed to prefer to focus on humping.

And even that it degenerates itself into soft porn territory, but at least soft porns are being honest about it. The story is neither a tragedy, or comedy, just plain boring drama infused with plenty of sex, which becomes meaningless, and mechanical after a while with repeated actions that drills down to lack of skills in bed. Both the action and the characters lack the emotional core that grabs the attention of the audience and engage some cerebral on why they are doing what they're doing.

Yu Hong (Lei Hao) is a village girl staying near the border of China and North Korea, and qualified for Beijing University in the late 80s. Leaving behind her shopkeeper father and a postal service boyfriend who deflowered her in the middle of a road late one night, she goes to the big city, but inside is quite unhappy about it. You know, she's one of those girls with huge emotional baggage problems that nobody, including herself, understands why.

Friendship comes in the form of fellow hostel mate Li Ti (Ling Hu), who introduces her to Zhou Wei (Guo Xiaodong) at one of those jam and hop sessions, and thereafter they become sex partners trying to heat up the screen. It becomes love found, love lost, making love, love lost, love found, you get the idea. We have confused characters who do not know what to do with each other, and to make things worse, they're promiscuous too, making everything quite frivolous in their quest to satisfy their lust for sex. Even the direction and story became schizophrenic, and with the lack of skill, breezes through events like the Tiananmen Incident, and the fall of Communism with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev's resignation, Yeltsin's ascension to power, and the likes, with just archived images, and subtitles indicating the event and the year. It's cheap, lazy film-making. Before you know it, it's down to the last hour where the characters have grown up, and apart in different countries.

There's a general feeling of lost, and if that's the filmmakers' intent, they have succeeded. Perhaps the best part is the reunion, where I thought is the only time when it's realistic with the feeling of helplessness and being tongue tied when meeting up with a loved one after donkey years - things are never the same again, and could never be the same anymore, and do you wish to hold onto the past, or move on to your own future?

Despite the pretentious plot and characters, the movie does feature an excellent eclectic soundtrack, and there thankfully helped keep everyone awake. Otherwise it's as hokey as the inscription on the tombstone - unless it's a mega tombstone, I don't see how those words could have been inscribed on it without running out of space.

Great movie

[epuqianwang · 10/10 · 21 June 2022]

Personally one of the best Chinese movies I have ever watched. The sadnesses of the loss of a generation and the cruel marching of history moves me deeply. Love the performance of Hao lei!

Disgusting

[yasaka · 1/10 · 24 January 2008]

This is the worst Chinese movie ever made and I am so shameful of Lou Ye. I personal experienced the Tian'an'men Square incidence and pretty much understood what that student generation looked like. What depicted in this movie is totally a fake! I chatted with my other peers who watched this movie and they all expressed the same feeling as mine. Disgusting! They are all so angry! This movie was intentionally made for westerners. If you believe what you saw, then you were cheated. Such storyline has nothing to do with Tian'an'men Square incidence, has nothing to do with the associated university. It's a pure crap! If you like this movie, before making your own comment, try to contact your Chinese friends who had been through the transformations in late 80s and early 90s, they will tell you what the real life is. DO not be fooled by this movie. It is absolutely misleading.

"Put on your red shoes and dance the blues..."

[fablesofthereconstru-1 · 9/10 · 11 July 2008]

Yu Hong(Hao Lei) is no different than the average American youth. Although the first-year college student may take a passing interest in her country's political climate, the super-charged ambiance of the bustling Beijing University campus never makes a strong enough impression to usurp the personal fireworks she started with a boy named Zhao Wei(Guo Ziading). While her classmates talk about politics in smoke-filled cafes and bars, she and Zhao Wei are having hot sex in his dorm room. Yu Hong is apolitical. Dancing to bad American music gave Yu Hong and other young people like her the impression that they didn't have to fight for the right to bop along to Toni Basil. The girl from the small provincial town can open her legs all she wants, but it still doesn't make China an open country.

Campus life is a sheltered life of consciousness raising and extra-curricular activities. In "Yihe yuan", the leeway that the Chinese government allows their young people to speak their minds is mistaken for freedom. Because the students smoke, drink, f***, and dance like Americans, they forget that this intellectual and spatial enclave was the site of a purge that resulted in a lot of over-qualified laborers who dotted the countryside. In one pointed scene, to illustrate how young people like Yu Hong and Zhao Wei took their deliverance from collectivism for granted, the two lovers pedal for the lead in a playful bicycle race, and as they alternate being in the front position, a passing poster of Mao Tse Tsung reminds the viewer that life in Red China was a utilitarian one. Yu Hong and Zhao Wei don't live in a vacuum. The image of this dictator is a foreshadowing of things to come. To go racing in the streets that once flowed with blood, and will soon flow again, is an innocent but flagrant act of defiance. There can't be a battle of the sexes until the battle is won against the government.

After their love breaks down, Yu Hong writes in her diary that she taught Dong Dong, a roommate, how to masturbate. As an afterthought, she reports on the first rumblings of the students' protest at Tianamen Square that infamously ended in police gunfire. Yu Hong makes love, not war, and the same goes for Zhao Wei, as well. When the first shots are fired into the student congregation, Zhao Wei hardly notices the pandemonium that surrounds him. All he cares about is locating Yu Hong before she returns home to Yumen.

Yu Hong and Zhao Wei aren't heroic. Their participation in history was pure happenstance. It's not fair to paint them as anti-heroes, but they are, despite their tender age. "Yihe yuan" is not a film about revolutionaries, but still the lovers make a political statement with their bodies. "Yihe yuan" ends with a post-script that informs us on the current whereabouts of Yu Hong and Zhao Wei as if they were real people. This simulacrum of reality gives us the impression that we've just witnessed a documentary about their otherwise fictive lives. By doing this, their f***** seems real enough to be thought of as a weapon to fight back against the government, with love, instead of bullets.

This is a response for DICK STEEL comments on the movie

[lucianoalexander-2 · 10/10 · 15 April 2008]

This is a response for DICK STEEL comments on the movie. You should put his comment on the end of the line. It's useless!!!!

The movie is a piece of art! The director,the actors,the music,the editing,everything fit smoothly in this picture.The writer- director did a phenomenal job telling the story.I felt the soul of the director in this picture.I think it is one of the best films I've seen in the last couple of years.If you have no sensibility as a person,don't try to criticize somebody who put his mind ,time and soul in telling a story,because you confuse the soft porn movies with this one.The way that the director shows sex is in the most realistic and sincere way possible. If he wouldn't use sex in telling the story, the characters might not be so well defined . If somebody doesn't have an understanding of art ,and view the movie with a preconceived perception about sex,then don't see this movie!

We don't need your opinion.

Go see spider man 3,and enjoy,bla,bla ,bla!!!!

a film of love and courage

[moviescorner · 9/10 · 13 July 2008]

First time to watch Ye Lou's movie, I think it's not a perfect film, but certainly it's a good one.He is good at depicting the love deep in the heart:the love with desire,contradiction,unfaith,loss and the future.The film can remind your past time while you were young,can make you miss your lost romantic, can make you think over the love,the youth.So, a beautiful love drama it is.I also have to mention this backdrop of the 6/4 incident happened in Beijing in 1989 in the movie,as I known, no other directors in China dared to take this backdrop in any movies up to now, so I respect Mr.Lou's courage. At last I think the best character in the drama is Li Ti played by Ling Hu .The flaw of the film is at the end when Yu Hong and Zhou Wei met, I think, the process is not very good.