Summer Palace

Summer Palace (2006) was banned in China and its director, Lou Ye, was barred from making films for five years. Sex was not the only reason. Yu Hong leaves the provinces for university in Beijing and falls into a consuming relationship with another student. The student movement is growing in the same years, and the film arrives at 1989. It does not use those days as backdrop but as the air the characters are breathing. Almost no Chinese film depicts Tiananmen directly, and that is the real reason for what happened. Lou Ye shot without permission and sent the film to Cannes without permission. The second half extends to Berlin and across the following decade. Some viewers find it diffuse. Others say the real grief is there: nothing happened, and everybody became someone else. Hao Lei's performance carries it. It runs 135 minutes. Good for: Chinese independent cinema, love stories with a political ground, and the Sixth Generation directors. Less good for: the sex is explicit and frequent. The editing is loose and the time jumps are abrupt. Anyone wanting a historical account will not find one. This is entirely personal.