Summer Palace (Ye Lou, 2006)

[James]

What is the general consensus here on this one?

[Anhedionisiac]

I don't know about general. It's probably an even split. Me, I'm in the "dislike it" neighborhood, for what it's worth.

[James]

I don't know about general. It's probably an even split. Me, I'm in the "dislike it" neighborhood, for what it's worth.

Thanks for the reply. Could you possibly elaborate?

[Anhedionisiac]

Sure, it's a reasonable request. I certainly wanted to like it, what with the whole censorship hullabaloo. Only I'm afraid you might be dissapointed and find my reasons irritatingly simple-minded and petty, just as I found the movie itself lacking.

It all boils down to the confusion and turmoil the central character feels. Others might find her desires, and the chaos and rhytm they leave in their wake, intoxicating. I thought it was manipulative (just as I find the notion of cinema a place to project ourselves into a quaint one) but that's a common complaint when it comes to directors who place emotions squarely over other considerations. Let's be more specific.

The film is clearly set on finding the groove of the times and roll with it. Which is all well and good except it's not really the groove of the times at all but the main character's: unintentionally comical hand-wringing.
A fairly natural assesment of most college-age diary entries, yes, but we 're meant to take it all at face-value and side with her & Co. This is not what it was like being at the sidelines of Beijing University in the late eighties, this is the vague recollection of pretty much all selfish students who ever went to college, caught up in the drama of their own lives, muddled up with some general notions about Berlin and Beijing that any Joe Schmoe could come up with. Another play-by-play revival of the standard dramatic turn of events that mediocre movies are saddled with.
All in all, what baffles the mind is that China could get all worked up over this, a Wong Kar-Wai clone who probably, as of late, has been watching The Dreamers, Jules And Jim, Y Tu Mamá Tambien and Regular Lovers.

Anyroads. What about you? What'd you think of Summer Palace?

[James]

I'm a fan of Regular Lovers, was interested by The Dreamers, was not interested by Y Tu Mamá Tambien and hated Jules and Jim, but I think I can already see the comparisons (especially with regards to the first of said tier). I haven't seen the movie yet, and am new to the forums. As such, I was looking for opinions other than those of the critics, if perhaps, to get an idea of the tastes on this board.

I'm already quite pleased by the inclusion of a thread for each Criterion movie, and that will certainly compel me to seek as many of those out to rent and watch as I can this summer (the commentary for each movie on these boards is really great). Also, I might rent Summer Palace this week just so we can compare thoughts.

[Anhedionisiac]

I'm new here so I'm no barometer as to the tastes of the forum but I do hope I'm not out of place.
Good luck renting Summer Palace (may you get more out of it that I did) and welcome to the boards.

[sidehacker]

A nice movie. I think I still like Suzhou River more, though, if only for the wonderful Xun Zhou.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

[mild spoilers]

Anhedionisiac comes close to summing up my feelings, although Yu Hong's "confusion and turmoil" is above and beyond typical college student confusion and turmoil, or even the provincial-girl-goes-to-the-big-city variety -- which is to be expected given the extraordinary historical circumstances, but it's hard to shake the feeling that she's messed up from the very beginning. Without any real psychological foregrounding, I felt obliged to conclude that she got that way because a) she's a teenaged girl and we all know how craaaazy they are or b) she's some sort of overdetermined symbol for a developing, "schizophrenic" China that's shown mainly in clumsy montages (the introduction-to-Beijing sequence is just plain embarassing). June 4th doesn't really seem to affect her except as a pretext for sending Zhou Wei off to Germany (it's suggested he has political commitments of some kind, but he's never developed beyond an object of obsession for Yu Hong and then a sounding board for Li Ti -- cliched female self-martyrdom providing the bulk of Lou's raw material here).

On a more serious note, the English text in the film (for the credits, captions, etc.) seems to be in Comic Sans or some basically identical font, which is almost reason enough by itself to round up every existing print and chuck them into the Siberian hole to Hell.

[Anhedionisiac]

Bugger alle for a larke, not only was that a quick rental, I'd completely forgotten about the Comic Sans incident.
I agree on pretty much all points, moreover.
Somebody else should chime in.
Conflict, people!

[thirtyframesasecond]

Showing as part of the 21st century Chinese cinema season at the BFI Southbank, London.

I haven't seen any of Lou Ye's previous films but really would like to see this, not just for the controversy that it caused in China (which helps of course, Lou Ye was given a five year ban from film making), but it looks like a potentially interesting combination of the personal and the political.