Summer Palace

Ye Lou has already challenged the Chinese authorities back in 2000 when he made Suzhou River. With Summer Palace, Lou really has made his mark as a politically daring director. Not that he is particularly interested in politics, he just refuses to let anyone else set the boundaries for his filmmaking. Hence in Summer Palace he shows footage of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989 as well as full frontal nudity. This Chinese-French co-production has been called a French art movie in an oriental dress, but there’s more to it than that. Young Yu Hong leaves her hometown to study in Beijing. With a wild love-affair as one of its thematic threads, the film follows the passionate, restless and chaotic student movement of the late 80’s as China for a period of time opens up to Western ideas and new influences. China becomes a hot bed about to explode - which actually happens in the summer of 1989. In the aftermath the life-hardened heroine Yu Hong, as well as China itself, has to sober up and start dealing with new social compromises. CHARLOTTE LJUNGGREN

Premiärstatus
Nordisk premiär: Orig. titel
Yihe yuan: Medverkande
Hao Lei, Guo Xiaodong, Hu Ling, Zhang Xiamin: Producent
Sylvain Bursztejn, Fang Li, Nai An: Manus
Lou Ye: Foto
Qing Hua: Musik
Peyman Yazdanian: Talat språk
Chinese, German