Summer Palace

2006

2h 20m

Romance

Drama

List

72%

Tomatometer

32 Reviews

59%

Audience Score

1,000+ Ratings

Country girl Wei leaves her village to attend university in Beijing, where she soon discovers an intense world of sexual freedom. She falls madly in love with Zhou, another student and, driven by wild passion, they play dangerous games with each other. When he is sent to a military camp and then to Germany after a violent protest, she finds a job and a new lover but cannot forget him. Once unrest begins in Berlin, Zhou decides to return to China and to Wei.

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Critics Consensus

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

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Chris Chang

Film Comment Magazine

The supporting cast is uniformly fine and excels at creating an emotional spectrum appropriate to the wildly variegated tonalities of Summer Palace's very realistic milieu.

Jun 17, 2013

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Hank Sartin

Time Out

Rated: 3/5

Nov 18, 2011

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Joshua Rothkopf

Time Out

Rated: 3/5

Nov 17, 2011

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David Walsh

World Socialist Web Site

The repeated and explicit sex scenes may represent the breaking of some taboo in China, but they are pointless and dull.

Feb 14, 2021

Full Review

Austin Kennedy

Sin Magazine

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

Rated: 1/4

Jul 22, 2008

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Shawn Levy

Oregonian

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

Rated: B

Mar 21, 2008

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ge h

Hao Lei's performance is the most beautiful thing in this film to me.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

06/14/23

Full Review

crattag z

Obviously,Summer Palace is an outstanding movie.But at the same time,The movie was overrated by the most audiences.（Just in my view）Firstly,This story is mainly about the love that between Yu Hong and Zhou Wei.And Li Ti play the role of wrecker,then it becomes a triangle affair.But Lou Ye didn't tell us a good story,because there are too many unnecessary plots,which makes the movie become broken.And the political metaphor is boring and meaningless,but this also made this movie a taboo.While there are too many beautiful and elegant scenes ,the story is still broken and boring...Overall,outstanding but broken.elegant but boring.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Mark一下国内平台找不到的电影虽然内容早忘了

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/19/23

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Audience Member

it's banned in china mainland. fxxk

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

02/01/23

Full Review

Audience Member

I would ban this movie not because of its political view (because there was none), or because of the nudity content (there were lots of bad naked scenes). I would ban it because it's such a bad movie with lots of dialogue of the main character's inside voice. The movie might be better if it's on mute. They can also delete the epilogue on what happened to the main characters. Because frankly my dear, no one gives a d***. That's 2.5 hours I'm never going to get back.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

02/11/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Agonizingly slow, certainly weird, yet strangely artistic; great use of music and minimalist dialogue.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

02/17/23

Full Review

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Ye Lou

Director

Lei Hao

Yu Hong

Xiaodong Guo

Zhou Wei

Xueyun Bai

Wang Bo

Lin Cui

Xiao Jun

Long Duan

Tang Caoshi

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Synopsis

Country girl Wei leaves her village to attend university in Beijing, where she soon discovers an intense world of sexual freedom. She falls madly in love with Zhou, another student and, driven by wild passion, they play dangerous games with each other. When he is sent to a military camp and then to Germany after a violent protest, she finds a job and a new lover but cannot forget him. Once unrest begins in Berlin, Zhou decides to return to China and to Wei.

Director: Ye Lou
Producer: Sylvain Bursztejn, Li Fang, An Nai
Screenwriter: Ye Lou, Feng Mei, Ma Yingli, Yingli Ma
Production Co: Laurel Films Inc.
Genre: Romance, Drama
Original Language: German
Release Date (DVD): Mar 11, 2008
Box Office (Gross USA): $62.7K
Runtime: 2h 20m