Summer Palace (2006) on Netflix
Yu Hong leaves her home city of Tumen to study at Beiqing University in Beijing. There she begins a passionate affair with a fellow student, Zhou Wei. Around them, classmates demand democracy.
- Netflix2.8/5
- IMDb7.2/105,110 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes72%
Trailer
Plot summary
At Beiqing University in Beijing, Yu Hong, a new student from Tumen, the small border city in Jilin on the North Korean-Chinese border, is lonely and isolated in the crowded dormitories. Willful and hungry to live life more intensely, she befriends Li Ti, an English major, and meets Li Ti's boyfriend Ruo Gu and his friend Zhou Wei. Yu Hong and Zhou Wei begin a passionate and volatile love affair, one of provocations and recriminations. Around them, fellow students organize for democracy and freedom, and the movement moves toward Tiananmen Square, drawing the campus and the couple into the protests.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Summer Palace (2006)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Lou Ye cast Hao Lei as Yu Hong from over 400 candidates, choosing her because she was the only one who turned him down, fearing the sex scenes would damage her love relationship. The crew waited so long for her that Liu Ye, the original choice for Zhou Wei, had to abandon the project.
- Summer Palace is the first film from mainland China to show full-frontal adult nudity of both its male and female leads; earlier mainland films such as Xiao Wu (1998), Lan Yu (2001), Green Hat (2003) and Star Appeal (2004) had shown adult male full-frontal nudity only.
- Chinese censors said Summer Palace was banned on aesthetic grounds, claiming poor technical quality such as blurred images in dorm-room scenes. Lou Ye and producer Nai An were then forbidden by the Chinese government to make any new films for five years.
