Yihe yuan (2006)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

Ye Lou

Writers:

Ye Lou (writer)
Feng Mei (writer)

Release Date:

18 April 2007 (France)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

Country girl Yu Hong leaves her village, her family and her lover to study in Beijing. At university...

Plot Keywords:

Female Nudity | Sex | Revolt | Berlin Germany | Student

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Xueyun Bai	...	Wang Bo
Lin Cui	...	Xiao Jun
Long Duan	...	Tang Caoshi
Xiaodong Guo	...	Zhou Wei
Lei Hao	...	Yu Hong
Ling Hu	...	Li Ti
Chi Le	...	Woman
Xianmin Zhang	...	Ruo Gu

Also Known As:

Summer Palace (International: English title) (USA) (new title)
Une jeunesse chinoise (France)

Runtime:

France:140 min (Cannes Film Festival) | Netherlands:158 min

Country:

China | France

Language:

Mandarin | German

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Singapore:R21 | South Korea:18 | Japan:R-18

Filming Locations:

Beijing, China

Company:

Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC)

Trivia:

In September of 2006, director Lou Ye was barred from making movies for five years because the film incorporated footage of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and wasn't screened for Chinese officials. The Chinese government also demanded that all copies of the film be confiscated.

Quotes:

Yu Hong: I want us to break up.
Zhou Wei: Why?
Yu Hong: Because I can't leave you.

Movie Connections:

Features Quatre cents coups, Les (1959)

a well-intended mess

Like many others, I went to see this film because it was (temporarily) nominated to the top award at Cannes and because I was curious about all the controversy surrounding it. (The Chinese government banned it at home and asked that it be removed from the competition) However, I was deeply disappointed by what I saw. The film seemed to me little more than a very shallow soap opera with a number of gratuitous sex scenes.

Lou Ye, the director/screenwriter, uses here historical events as a time reference for his story: the 1989 student protests at Tiananmen, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union. What's unusual here is that although the main characters are (quite accidentally) caught up in the government's suppression of the student protests in Beijing, they're completely oblivious to the magnitude of the drama and the significance of the political events surrounding them. They're too self-absorbed and too busy jumping from bed to bed to care about anything else. But perhaps that's part of the point that the film is trying to make? That passion is blinding? That romance/lust is stronger than politics? (Their affair seems so empty of any substance -- other than sex -- that I never quite understood if it is driven by love or lust)

Either way, the film was decent until a certain point when I could have sworn that it was about to end. But I was wrong: a very long hour of clichés and pointless melodrama was still awaiting me... Whatever was interesting in the first half of the film (the dreamy photography or the teenage frenzy) was completely absent in the second half. The pace slowed down, the characters became permanently teary-eyed and the corniest piano music took over. It was a mess. As I stopped caring for the story and its characters, I patiently waited for the film to end. (Many simply got up and left the theater)

I should add here that I love slow, long films with beautiful photography, but in this case there just isn't enough to grab onto. In fact, it was painful to watch.

One can judge from the reaction of the audience that this film is one that people either love or hate. I totally respect that some enjoyed the movie but I can't say that I did. It's probably not so much a matter of age, as someone else suggested, as it is simply a matter of different tastes.