i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Lou ye's film summer palace is really a good exercise of great cinema, that kind of movie makes you think about it even after have watched it..Is one of those films that I call hard to watch, there are too much pain in it, but that is what in art I always call, find the beauty of the sadness, when a film can make you feel different kind of emotions means that the movie have succeed and summer palace is a great success...for me is hard to understand the girl's mind in that film,because the whole movie she seems lost, looks like she is unable to be happy and when she can be, she avoid it...same happen with some of the other characters of the film..this film can be classified like a tragedy without hope

This film is about several Chinese people, about how they grow up and how time changes them. It is focused on one couple, the very intense passion that they feel for each other and the paths that life shows them in relation of what they feel in each step of their lives...This movie is centered in love. More exactly, it is centered in the romantic view of life, which is destined to collide with the fact of growing up, because the characters in the film just can't manage to keep their passionate feelings while they start living other things after leaving university. It is as if life and circumstances pushes them to leave behind their memories, the anchor that seems to keep the characters living and knowing that they are someone. I think it is interesting how this is managed as the film goes by, because I recognized this feeling in myself and among my friends: about how, by leaving school, you have the feeling to be adrift in the universe of life.Also, the passion that the characters feel becomes sedated by the tedium of their lives after school. I think the director tries to communicate that feeling: after university, the characters start to get bored with their lives, compared with what they lived in school. It is sad to look how the woman character struggles to keep that feeling alive, but always feeling depressed because she can't grasp that passion that just goes away. They travel, they meet other people, they get jobs, but simply it's not the same. This is also related to the student's protests in China, all the feelings and expectations they generate, and the disillusion they found when they have to confront the real world.Finally, I think what the film communicates, is that every emotion, love, feeling or whatsoever, is seized by time. This is something that the characters just don't get and the reason of why they suffer: they can't accept that they are different from the ones that were young and passionate. Even in long marriages, couples have to reinvent themselves to keep together each other, or simply they fall in the arms of custom. This last thing is what the characters refuse to do, always trying to keep their feelings alive. But that's also the reason of why they suffer, especially the woman character: they live attached to their memories and they leave part of their identity in the past. I think that a phrase that is showed in the french movie "Irreversible" could fit perfectly on this one: TIME DESTROYS EVERYTHING. But in this film, this phrase applies in a more subtle way, in something that involves people's identities.I liked the movie. It was one of those which you can't get out of your head for the rest of the day. The acting is good and the music is great. If there is something to criticize, is that the film is a little bit too long for what it express, specially at the second part of the film. I found other criticism unfounded: sex is an important part of the film, since it express passion, and it's definitely NOT a soap opera, because it doesn't have a happy ending and it has a message that you have to discover by thinking and feeling the film.I recommend this one.

The only value in this over-hyped movie is in seeing how much China changes as a modern society, from the beginning of the story ( 1987 ), to the end ( 2001 ). The country is truly racing forward in that sense.The troubled, narcissistic heroine has moments on screen which are really rather touching: but she cannot seem to connect with anyone she meets at the university in Beijing. She is an emotional recluse. What is so galling is that we never, ever, get to have any clues about why she is so alienated from everything in her life. She has been plucked from a village near the border with North Korea and admitted to the very metropolitan Beijing University. She makes friends, so she is not all alone in that giant place.The only comparison which might resonate with western viewers is to think of a bright young thing from a small town in Montana who finds herself enrolled at the University of Chicago. It's a grand opportunity for her to learn and to excel, and all the leading lady can seem to do is feel depressed about her emotions, and then to "hook up" with an absolute Cad and Bounder. Naturally he charms her and they get into a steamy physical affair which goes absolutely no where.The leading man is a good actor but he is playing a fellow who is an out and out shark in sexual terms and not even very handsome.Near the end of this dreadful film, a woman who was friends with the leading lady -- and who has had her own fling with the "hero" -- drops herself off of a tall building in Berlin for no explainable reason at all !! Worse yet, many parts of the film are shot in dark hallways and with poor resolution, it felt like the director was having some kind of a mental black-out. This film cost five bucks to rent on DVD and that was precisely five bucks too many. Skip it, please, if you value your time and your own money.

What is the rationale for director Lou Ye to name the movie Summer Palace, or known as Yi He Yuan in Mandarin? Perhaps it is because, the story begins with a girl named Yu Hong (Hao Lei) who was sharing her passionate moments with her boyfriend Xiao Jun at Tumen, a rural area at the border between China and North Korea in the 80's, before leaving the hometown to study in a university in Beijing.And perhaps it is because when her new friend, Li Ti, introduces Zhou Wei (Guo Xiao Dong) to her, that makes Yu Hong and Zhou Wei falling in love with each other instantly, that they spend their summer in dormitory, having endless sex. Their relationship has been going on and off during this period, until the Tiananmen incident broke out in 1989, which causes deaths to hundreds of university students in China.For that, you have seen half of the story. And yes, that is what we get for Summer Palace, without seeing much direct relationship between the famous imperial palace and the love and sex of a young couple.As what Yu Hong said in her diary, she is excited to meet new guys, but always ends up having sex with them as she thinks of her first time meeting Zhou Wei. The message we received from her was: sex has been an outlet to release her fear and anxiety, together with the love she still holds for Zhou Wei.Lou Ye has explained the inner world of Yu Hong in the first half of the story. But the second half seems to drag the movie down. The movie continues with the government declaring an state of emergency during the Tiananmen incident, and it was fast forward to the year 1998, with footages of several incidents that took place in China and the communist country in the world. The next moment, we see how Yu Hong and Zhou Wei lead their individual life in ShenZhen and Berlin respectively, without much explanation on what has happened to them throughout the years.To make the dry spell more unbearable, the 140 minutes drama lacks a solid detail to support a good storyline. Not much details were explained, which makes the movie pretty dull and draggy. The sex scenes featured in the film also makes it seems to be a cheap pornographic production. But, to the filmmakers in China, Summer Palace is the first made in China production that openly explores sex, which is very rare. The explicitness of the scenes has made Summer Palace the first movie in China that is challenging the censors of China. (Which explains why the movie was banned in China for discussion of Tiananmen incident, tonnes of sex scenes and participating in Cannes Film Festival without approval from the authorities.) The summer could be enjoyable if more juices can be provided in the palace.