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Too much of everything

Must See Movie...

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This film caught me from the moment it started at my screen. we see a young girl encountering her first experiences with love and sex.set at the decor of the huge changes China is undergoing in the mid-eighties.She is excepted at university and meets a handsome guy she's so overpowering in love with , it's scary...wow , the acting , directing ,editing, photography...is breathtaking..the story sometimes heartbreaking..trough sidesteps we are witnessing the student uproar at tianamen square etc.the 2 main characters loose sight of each other and we follow moments of their separate lives.. A breathtaking lovestory about love so strong , it hurts. definitely worth watching.

It supposes to be a movie telling a story about the college students in 1989. However, none of the character, I mean none, can reflect what people were like during that time. What the characters in this movie actually represent is a bunch of rascals. And it didn't spend any effort portraying the historical background and the people in it. There is no logic in this movie. It even portraits the whole incident wrong. I am strongly offended by this movie and how it used the history as a selling point. It attracts people by making them think it was banned due to political reasons and it should be a somehow profound movie. Actually it has nothing to do with politics. This movie is nothing more than a pornography.

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.

Having watched the movie myself and reading some of the comments/reviews with regards to the movie prompted me to post something in fairness to the movie.I feel that the movie was meant to let audience have a feeling that the leads in the movies are lost. If we were to think of the backdrop of the movie, set in the late 80's, Tiananmen incident, the chant for democracy, all this would have let you understand that the China then was not a China that many could understand.The China up till the 80s was probably such a controlled and suppressed place to live in, and when these suppressed feelings and emotions were suddenly set free, it was like an explosion. The literature and external factors began influencing the way the people viewed and did things. This could explain the "mindless" love making scenes as the desires to love and to have sex were probably something that was not openly displayed or demonstrated. Freedom is what everyone wants, but the maturity to handle the consequence of the actions brought about by freedom might not be something that everyone can handle.The movie also explores on people who dare not love. All because they fear losing it. I personally felt the characterization was done quite well, and was aptly shown by the character Yu Hong. Love is not something that can be explained logically or defined in any one way. The insight to the characters views and actions in this movie shows that clearly.Summer Palace is a movie worth watching, but it might not be a movie that is for everyone. Keep an open mind and try and understand the time and country this movie is set in, you'd probably appreciate the movie much better that way.