Summer Palace (2006)
*** Stars out of 5
Directed by: Lou Ye.
Starring: Hao Lei, Guo Xiaodong and Hu Ling
Running Time: 114 minutes
Rated: UR
Released: 2006
Language: Mandarin with English subtitles
Synopsis:
Summer Palace is the story that follows a beautiful and rebellious young Chinese woman, Yu Hon (Hao Lei) throughout almost a two decade period. Her story starts in a small town in 1988 where she receives word that has been accepted to Beijing University.
We follow her and the rest of modern China through the next twenty years of political and emotional unrest. We are subjected to her struggles with love, life individualism and sexuality.
Review:
To be honest, I really have no idea how to review this film. It had every mark of a classic dramatic masterpiece. But alas, I like masterpieces and I really couldn’t get into this one. It seems that for every separate aspect of this movie that I liked, there was something else about it that was much less desirable. But the overall flow of the film was at best a bit slow and confusing. At worst, this movie was convoluted and repetitive. But I digress; maybe I just didn’t get it.
This movie actually felt like two separate films. The first ended when she leaves the college, then we fast forward several years and pick up her life in a new city with a new job, new friends, but all of the same old tendencies. It was kind of a disappointment when I realized the new direction the film is steered in. This film switched gears shortly after the Tiananmen Square riot scene and I was just starting to become interested in what the film seemed to be trying to say about that extremely important period of Chinese history. I sort of felt as if this was intentional, in order to keep the story fully engulfed in Yu Hon’s personal struggles. Unfortunately, at this point, I was starting to get excited at the prospects of this film using the period to illustrate a philosophical parallel of Yu Hon’s individualism versus the collective oppression surrounding her. I honestly feel that this was an opportunity squandered. But again, I digress; I’ll try to review the film for what it was and not what I wish it was.
The acting, especially in the case of Hao Lei, was quite exceptional. She actually had a tougher job than what may have been apparent. I think that just a bit less tumult and personal struggle would have made her character seem more like a slut than a complex individual struggling with love and sexuality. The supporting cast was just as convincing but there were simply too much of them attempting to be crucial parts of her story. She was the only one that really mattered in this film and I think it could have done itself a favor by eliminating some of the support and shortening the running time of this movie a bit.
The cinematography in this feature was simultaneously artistic and awkward. I don’t think there was a steady cam shot in this entire movie. For some of the more intimate scenes, this worked very well, while at other times, the scene was just too shaky to get a good grasp on what was really going on. I’m not a big fan of disorientating the audience and many times this technique is used in a cheap ploy to cover up the lack of believable effects.
There was one portion of this movie that I found to be particularly spectacular. The score was nothing short of fantastic. The music behind the individual scenes did every other aspect a favor. It emphasized the dreary and dramatic in ways that no camera angles or teary eyes could have accomplished. I am probably the last person to notice a movie’s score, unless it was completely out of place and bad or really, really good. This one was quite moving.
In summary, I would probably recommend this film purely on the basis that I finished it with an overwhelming feeling that I had missed something. I would watch it again in hopes of finding it, but at 140 minutes, I simply don’t have the time to take another stab at something that I may not like even more the second time around.