Summer Palace (2006)

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Directed by Lou Ye.

Starring Hao Lei, Guo Xiaodong, Hu Ling, Zhang Xianmin.

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A romance takes place against some of the most turbulent events in recent Chinese history in this epic-scale story from filmmaker Lou Ye. Yu Hong (Hao Lei) is a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl who is soon to leave the small border town where she was born and raised to attend college at Beijing University. Shortly before Yu Hong leaves for school, she gives her virginity to her longtime boyfriend, Xiao, and pledges to remain faithful to him. At Beijing University, Yu Hong makes friends with Li Ti (Hu Ling), another girl dealing with a long distance relationship, and meets Zhou Wei (Guo Xiaodong), a handsome student who soon steals her heart. Yu Hong leaves her relationship with Xiao behind to commit herself to Zhao Wei, and she's swept up by her feelings for him as they embrace the new social and economic freedoms which are being felt on campus. The empowerment felt by the students in Beijing come to a head during a series of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square; the protests have tragic consequences, and the excitement of new possibilities gives way to a feeling of defeat. Yu Hong and Zhou Wei are separated and the heavy hand of the state is brought to bear on the rebellious students. The first Chinese film to feature full-frontal male and female nudity, Yiheyuan (aka Summer Palace) received its world premier as an official selection at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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Reviews and discussions

Chinese Thoughts On Love
by joem18b in joem18b Blog

hasn't rated it.

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"Spoiler Alert: If you want the ending of Summer Palace to be a surprise, read no further.After watching two hours and twenty minutes of cigarette smoking in yet another Asian movie (see also my comments on the subject in my review of Drifters), I finally bestirred myself long enough to fish up the following news bites:"Guiyang, China — Here's some exciting medical news from the Chinese government: Smoking is great for your health. Cigarettes, according to China's tobacco authorities, are an excellent way to prevent ulcers. They also reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, relieve schizophrenia, boost your brain cells, speed up your thinking, improve your reactions and increase your working efficiency." "With annual sales of 1.8 trillion cigarettes, the Chinese monopoly is responsible for almost one-third of all cigarettes smoked on the planet today. Two-thirds of Chinese men are smokers, and surveys show that as many as 90 per cent believe their habit has little effect on the ... " [More]

Meticulous but ultimately disap ...
by vhsparrow in vhsparrow Blog

hasn't rated it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]
"Unlike other reviewers, I was disappointed with Summer Palace. That's not to say that there aren't impressive things going on in it -- it just seems that my expectations became distorted after what seemed to me an elaborate and meticulous emphasis on direction and production design to refer to European nouvelle vague films that goes entirely nowhere. In the disk's promotional blurb, the film is described as a first-hand account of Tianamen Square in Beijung, c. 1989. The film's writer-director, Lou Ye apparently participated in those protests back in the day, but the film does very little to communicate exactly what those students were after -- was it more 'democracy'? More civil rights? Greater freedom of self-expression? The film may have been forbidden to cross those thematic threshholds on account of domestic funding, but what Lou Ye starts to create is a visually compelling film that self-consciously references French and Italian cinema of the 1960 only to sputter out when it ... " [More]

Spout #10: Summer Palace
by TheWorkingDead in TheWorkingDead Blog

liked it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]
"Writer/Director Lou Ye's Summer Palace takes place over about 15 years, beginning in the late eighties and ending up in 2003. The movie begins as Yu Hong(a charismatically detached Hao Lei, mental note to look for her in other films) discovers she's been accepted to the Beijing University. Shortly afterward she has spontaneous, furtive sex with her boyfriend in a field. The way they move quickly away from one another, and thesuspicious , embarrassed looks they give each other after the act implies that this is their first time. It also gives us some emotional hook to grab onto, since her boyfriend,Xao Jun(played by Cui Jin ) will soon be absent until past the halfway point. Much has been made of the sex in this movie, primarily because it's so frequent and, some say, graphic. I didn't find this film to be anywhere near as graphic as most Hollywood sex scenes, with their fetishistic lighting and camera movements.In college, Yu Hong is a solitary loner, smoking in the hallway because ... " [More]

Re:Summer Palace
by tadiv in Spout Mavens

is neutral about it.

"My review of Summer Palace is here in my tadiv blog. Tom " [More]

Hindsight adds clarity with a l ...
by tadiv in tadiv Blog

is neutral about it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]
"Palm Pictures presents a film directed by Ye Lou. Summer Palace was written by Ye Lou, Feng Mei, and Ma Yingli. This picture stars Lei Hao as Yu Hong in the lead role. Supporting roles are cast with Xiaodong Guo, Ling Hu, Xianmin Zhang, Long Duan, Lin Cui, and Xueyun Bai. Summer Palace runs 140 minutes and is not rated by the MPAA though the content would clearly receive an “R” rating from the board. None of the content seemed to be beyond that of the “R” rating. Yu Hong, a pretty young woman from a small peasant town in rural China, is accepted into Beijing University in the late ‘80s. The next 18 or so years of her turbulent life unfold on screen as she struggles with her political, social, economic, and romantic situations. Well-filmed and edited, Summer Palace was an official selection for the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Summer Palace seems to be the story of a woman who just can’t decide what she wants to do. Yu Hong’s lif ... " [More]

Summer Palace
by belladonna2054 in belladonna2054 Blog

liked it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]
"Summer Palace (2006) is based on a true story that centers on a young woman named Yu Hong (played by Hao Lei) as she goes on a 20-year journey from the late 1980s to present day China. We first see her as a young girl falling in love with the boy next door named Xiao Jun (Lin Cui) only to move on after being accepted into Beijing University. While attending university, we see her study, make friends, and become involved with the political activity that sweeps the campus. All the while Yu Hong records every thought and feeling she experiences in her diary which becomes the narration of the film. We see the conditions that she and other college students had to endure and restrictions placed on them by the Chinese government. Through it all she meets and falls in love with a man named Zhou Wei (Xiaodong Guo). It is their tumultuous relationship becomes the main focal point of the film. Yu Hong constantly says in the film that she wants to live and experience things more intens ... " [More]

Summer Palace
by analogzombie in analogzombie Blog

hasn't rated it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]
"A glow hangs over Lou Ye’s “Summer Palace” like that of your best memories. Ostensibly a college coming of age story for a young girl from the country set against the back drop of late 80’s Tiananmen Square Beijing, the swimmy story and dreamlike images conjure more a feeling freedom than of oppression. I suppose this strikes just the right tone then, for something so subversively political as to get banned by the Chinese government. Still, the politics don’t enter until late in the game, and the bulk of Ye’s film is concerned with the ups and downs of Yu Hong (Hao Lei) and her relationships. From a first encounter before leaving for college to the semi-mature love of Zhou Wei yet more lovers, Yu stumbles as she navigates her way into womanhood. The film is seen entirely through the lens of Yu Hong. As her love life begins to implode the student movement begins to explode. The ramping up of her emotions mirror the growing fervor with which ea ... " [More]

Depression=Sex (apparently)
by indieabby88 in Bloggish review blog

hasn't rated it.

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"The message of Lou Ye's film "Summer Palace" seems to be this: depressed people have sex. A lot. There are three major characters in Ye's film that have some obvious issues, and all of them waste no time hopping into bed with each other in an attempt to escape their apparent (and unexplained) pain. The director manages to make this situation somewhat interesting during the first half of the movie, but the last half drags miserably to a conclusion that doesn't seem like a neat wrap-up of the events we've witnessed, but a confession that Ye is just as bored with the movie as the audience is, and he wanted it to be over as much as I did. It's pretty seldom that I come across a film that has me counting down the minutes until the end, but "Summer Palace" managed to do just that. The story starts with Yu Hong, a girl from a small town in China who gets accepted to Beijing University just before the Tiananmen Square massacre. She makes friends with ... " [More]

Summer Palace
by lopezdash in Spout Mavens

hasn't rated it.

"Summer Palace (2006) Directed by Lou Ye. Starring Hao Lei, Guo Xiaodong, Hu Ling, Zhang Xianmin. A romance takes place against some of the most turbulent events in recent Chinese history in this epic-scale story from filmmaker Lou Ye. Yu Hong (Hao Lei) is a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl who is soon to leave the small border town where she was born and raised to attend college at Beijing University. Shortly before Yu Hong leaves for school, she gives her virginity to her longtime boyfriend, Xiao, and pledges to remain faithful to him. At Beijing University, Yu Hong makes friends with Li Ti (Hu Ling), another girl dealing with a long distance relationship, and meets Zhou Wei (Guo Xiaodong), a handsome student who soon steals her heart. Yu Hong leaves her relationship with Xiao behind to commit herself to Zhao Wei, and she's swept up by her feelings for him as they embrace the new social and economic freedoms which are being felt on campus. The ... " [More]

Tags: china , college , history , allegory , epic
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