Summer Palace
Lou Ye
It is worth noting that the title of the film is Summer Palace, and not Tiananmen Square. Even though director Lou Ye conflates the personal with the political, it is the former that has his attention here.
The story begins with Yu Hong (Hao Lei) leaving her border hometown of Tumen for Beijing, where she has been accepted at university. Lou paints in a few broad strokes the heady and intoxicating brew that is college life.
When Yu meets fellow student Zhou Wei (Guo Xiaodong), they share an intimate bonding moment on the grounds of the Summer Palace. This is something which Yu subsequently tries to recapture in the course of her life, but to no avail.
At the same time, the young lovers’ intensely emotional and physical relationship is being played out against the background of intellectual foment.Willy-nilly, Yu, Zhou and their classmates are drawn into the student protests of mid-1989.
Perhaps the most moving scene in the film is when Zhou Wei’s room-mate lashes out in anger and frustration after a long, terrible night in which students are fired upon. Suddenly, personal relationships are dwarfed into insignificance.
But despite the most momentous of upheavals, life goes on and the characters have to struggle with the quotidian business of living and loving.
Hao gives a fearless performance as the vulnerable and temperamental Yu for whom sex is a means of revealing herself to the man she loves. She and Guo also share a chemistry that comes through on screen.
Guo has less to work with given the somewhat enigmatic character of Zhou. It is also disconcerting to find in him a strong resemblance to Adrian Pang in certain scenes.
You wish, though, that the acting is in service to a stronger story.
While there is a point to the anti-climactic feel of the latter half of the movie, it seems a little repetitive as Yu moves from one man to another, even as she knows that she will not find what she is looking for.
By the time the denouement finally rolls around, the idealism and hope of summer has long passed and it seems that only a chilly and desolate winter lies ahead.
(ST)