Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Desertman84 Summer Palace is a politically charged drama from director Lou Ye.The movie features Hao Lei and Guo Xiaodong.The screenplay by Lou Ye, Feng Mei and Ma Yingli tells the story of Chinese political upheaval through the eyes of protagonist Yu Hong, who moves from her rural community to embrace life in Beijing. Spanning nearly 20 years, the film elucidates the mindset of the Chinese revolutionary youth during the 1980's and into the new millennium through its narration by Hong, who reads diary excerpts to set scenes.Yu Hong is a beautiful 17-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,another girl dealing with a long-distance relationship, and meets Zhou Wei, a handsome student who soon steals her heart. Yu Hong leaves her relationship with Xiao behind to commit herself to Zhou 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 comes 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 movie suffers from excessive length and inconsistent pacing.Also,one who does not speak the movie's language needs full concentration to follow what's happening in the plot and to get the message that it is trying to impart.But nevertheless,it manages to be a brilliant and excellent film encapsulates an important moment in Chinese history and will especially enlighten viewers to the nuances of people struggling for freedom.Aside from that,we get to see the coming-of-age and maturation of Hong as she gets exposed to the her world and the changes she undergoes in response to it.

moviescorner 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.

pzGrenadier It supposes to be a movie telling a story about the college students in 1989. However, none of the character, I mean none, can reflect what people were like during that time. What the characters in this movie actually represent is a bunch of rascals. And it didn't spend any effort portraying the historical background and the people in it. There is no logic in this movie. It even portraits the whole incident wrong. I am strongly offended by this movie and how it used the history as a selling point. It attracts people by making them think it was banned due to political reasons and it should be a somehow profound movie. Actually it has nothing to do with politics. This movie is nothing more than a pornography.

janos451 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.