Now I don't mind movies that have the pace of a snail, but nothing freakin' happens in this movie. Nothing!
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07/22/08
Summer Palace (2008)
65 %
Tomatometer
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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.
Theatrical Release:Jan 18, 2008 Limited
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... [More]
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Reviews for Summer Palace
Though made in 2006, its American release could not have been better timed.
03/21/08
Top CriticIt can overwhelm you and puzzle and repel you, sometimes within moments.
03/21/08
It benefits from a riveting performance by newcomer Hao, but the whole is sadly unsatisfying.
03/13/08
It falls apart just when it was starting to pull itself together.
03/12/08
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?
03/10/08
Search out this vivid film in a theater. Don't let the sacrifices he [Director Lou Ye] made be in vain.
02/29/08
Top CriticMopey-soapy as it sometimes gets, though, this is intelligent, passionate stuff.
02/29/08
Like a Tolstoyan epic.
02/28/08
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.
01/28/08
Despite its problems, Summer Palace is still a good film thanks to [its] sweep-away moments.
01/24/08
The film becomes less and less involving as it spins out its excessive 140-minute running time.
01/22/08
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.
01/18/08
Top CriticLou Ye's Summer Palace examines youthful idealism and its unhappy aftermath.
01/18/08
Top CriticIn Yu Hong (Hao Lei), the film also has a vibrant heroine.
01/17/08
Top CriticTruth be told, Summer Palace feels more like an artier St. Elmo’s Fire than anything else.
01/17/08
A torrid sexual romance between two students at Beijing University set against the backdrop of changes simmering in China in 1989.
01/15/08
Combines flashes of insight and scintillating cinematography -- grainy, fumbling, light-blinded -- with stretches of inscrutable mediocrity.
01/15/08
Top CriticIn 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.
01/14/08
Top CriticYe'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.
01/11/08
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