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Summer Palace

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Summer Palace (2008)

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65 %
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Reviews Counted: 26

Fresh: 17

Rotten:9

Average Rating: 6.1/10

Consensus: Though it suffers from excessive length and inconsistent pacing, Summer Palace is held aloft by Hao Lei's riveting performance.

Runtime: 2 hrs 20 mins

Genre: Dramas

US Box Office: $0

Synopsis: China, 1989 Two young lovers play out their complex, erotic, love/hate relationship against a volatile backdrop of political unrest. Beautiful Yu Hong leaves her village, her family and her... China, 1989 Two young lovers play out their complex, erotic, love/hate relationship against a volatile backdrop of political unrest. Beautiful Yu Hong leaves her village, her family and her boyfriend to study in Beijing, where she discovers a world of intense sexual and emotional experimentation, and falls madly in love with fellow student Zhou Wei. Their relationship becomes one of dangerous games, as all around them their fellow students begin to demonstrate, demanding democracy and freedom. Lou Ye (SUZHOU RIVER; PURPLE BUTTERFLY) reveals a portrait of a place and a generation - China and liberated Chinese youth - as never seen before in the West. By turns lyrical and brutal, elegiac and erotic, SUMMER PALACE depicts a passionate love story and the struggle for personal liberty jeopardized by history and fate. [More]

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

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

Director: Ye Lou

Director: Ye Lou
Screenwriter: Ye Lou, Feng Mei, Ma Yingli
Producer: Li Fang, An Nai, Sylvain Bursztejn
Composer: Peyman Yazdanian
Studio: Palm Pictures

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Reviews for Summer Palace

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1 - 20 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
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Arrange By: Fresh | Rotten | Comments | Name | Source | Date
 
 

Now I don't mind movies that have the pace of a snail, but nothing freakin' happens in this movie. Nothing!

Full Review Source: Sin Magazine | comment Comment
07/22/08
Austin Kennedy
Sin Magazine

Though made in 2006, its American release could not have been better timed.

Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | comment Comment
03/21/08
G. Allen Johnson
San Francisco Chronicle

It can overwhelm you and puzzle and repel you, sometimes within moments.

Full Review Source: Oregonian | comment Comment
03/21/08
Shawn Levy
Oregonian

It benefits from a riveting performance by newcomer Hao, but the whole is sadly unsatisfying.

Full Review Source: Los Angeles CityBeat | comment Comment
03/13/08
Andy Klein
Los Angeles CityBeat

It falls apart just when it was starting to pull itself together.

Full Review Source: DVDTalk.com | comment Comment
03/12/08
David Cornelius
DVDTalk.com

The saying goes "There's a time and a place for everything, and it's called college." Who knew that included actually caring about something?

Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | comment Comment
03/10/08
Chris Cabin
Filmcritic.com

Search out this vivid film in a theater. Don't let the sacrifices he [Director Lou Ye] made be in vain.

Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times | comment Comment
02/29/08
Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Mopey-soapy as it sometimes gets, though, this is intelligent, passionate stuff.

Full Review Source: Los Angeles Daily News | comment Comment
02/29/08
Bob Strauss
Los Angeles Daily News

Like a Tolstoyan epic.

Full Review Source: L.A. Weekly | comment Comment
02/28/08
Scott Foundas
L.A. Weekly

Set against the tumultuous year of 1989, this vividly colorful melodrama of Chinese youth's sex and politics links the initimate and personal with the broader social forces in intriguing, fascinating ways.

Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | comment Comment
01/28/08
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com

Despite its problems, Summer Palace is still a good film thanks to [its] sweep-away moments.

Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid | comment Comment
01/24/08
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid

The film becomes less and less involving as it spins out its excessive 140-minute running time.

Full Review Source: Film Journal International | comment Comment
01/22/08
David Noh
Film Journal International

I still must recommend Summer Palace, especially for the remarkably strong performance by Hao Lei as Yu Hong, the daughter of a shopkeeper in the provinces.

Full Review Source: New York Post | comment Comment
01/18/08
V.A. Musetto
New York Post

Lou Ye's Summer Palace examines youthful idealism and its unhappy aftermath.

comment Comment
01/18/08
A.O. Scott
New York Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

In Yu Hong (Hao Lei), the film also has a vibrant heroine.

Full Review Source: Newsday | comment Comment
01/17/08
John Anderson
Newsday

Truth be told, Summer Palace feels more like an artier St. Elmo’s Fire than anything else.

Full Review Source: Time Out New York | comment Comment
01/17/08
Joshua Rothkopf
Time Out New York

A torrid sexual romance between two students at Beijing University set against the backdrop of changes simmering in China in 1989.

Full Review Source: Spirituality and Practice | comment Comment
01/15/08
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Spirituality and Practice

Combines flashes of insight and scintillating cinematography -- grainy, fumbling, light-blinded -- with stretches of inscrutable mediocrity.

Full Review Source: Village Voice | comment Comment
01/15/08
Julia Wallace
Village Voice

In truth, I’ve never seen so much lovemaking in an aboveground film, but the revelation, and great triumph, of Lou’s work is that these scenes are never pornographic -- that is, never separated from emotion.

Full Review Source: New Yorker | comment Comment
01/14/08
David Denby
New Yorker
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Ye's back-and-forth storytelling insinuates that the lives of Yu Hong and Zhou Wei are incomplete without each other, but because their young love was never convincing in the first place, the bittersweet conclusion rings hollow.

Full Review Source: About.com | comment Comment
01/11/08
Marcy Dermansky
About.com
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
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