Courtesy of MX

Review: 

Its a shame that Lou Yes Summer Palace finds its head and heart in too many places at once. Using the backdrop of Chinas bourgeoning social and political upheavals, romance and sensuality blossom and subsequently wither between Beijing students. A pensively dreary mood pervades its implicit study of contemporary Chinese history through the personal growth of Yu Hong (Hao Lei), a provincial lass who diffidently sheds that aspect of her life, including a childhood sweetheart and heads on to big city living by attending Beijing University in 1987 where she finds the rest of her life waiting. 

Despite rejecting the temptation to join the spate of anti-agitprop films emanating from a new wave of Chinese directors, Lou Yes invokes the restless political zeitgeist of the era to develop his characters foray into adulthood and their complicity in its generations evolving ideals that were heedlessly being driven into disillusionment by an inability to focus its euphoric states of cataclysms. Lou endeavours to repurpose the political climate of the country with the destructive and capricious nature of human interactions and dorm room politicking. 

Attempting to use these relationships to elucidate parallels between physical liberation and emotional repression, Lous directorial potency lies in the ability to craft intense and philosophically poignant sequences between his characters just through the understanding of the preceding context. He makes up for the overt pacification of his young lovers lack of emotional responses by the films explicit displays of sexuality, a trait shared by the storys ingnue, Yu, and her friends who Forrest Gump their way through crucial sociopolitical events in the 80s and 90s in China and Europe. 

Its hard to distinguish Lous film from merely being an uncompromising love story and from his almost obligatory social commentary by fecklessly situating his characters turmoil with a convenient political allegory. Already drawing criticisms and repercussions from the Chinese government when the film was shown in Cannes without authorisation from his motherland, the political spotlights are already aimed at Summer Palace. It could possibly recall The Dreamers in its looming thematic concerns but unlike Bertoluccis canvassing of the vive-le-revolucin backdrop, Lou does tend to trivialise the headlong collision of ideologies between youthful expressionism so as to reaffirm his audacity in depicting the ineffable Tiananmen Square event in 89. The artifice he constructs through his milieu is only enhanced by an enchanting performance by his leading lady. Hao brings a truth and vulnerability to her role that plays on a level far above the movie itself languors in.