Summer Palace SKINNYFest

Film Review by Ed Witcomb | 14 Aug 2006
Film title: Summer Palace SKINNYFest
Director: Ye Hou
Starring: Lei Hao, Xiaodong Guo

The personal and the political often snuggle up on screen, but rarely can they have made such sweet love as in this beautiful, arresting epic from China. In fact, its blend of naked bodies with footage of protestors heading for Tiananmen Square was too much for the Chinese authorities, whose recent attempt to scupper the film provided apt and deserved publicity.
The plot of 'Summer Palace' revolves around Yu Hong (Lei Hao), a provincial teenager who wins a place at Beijing University in 1988. She ditches her oaf of a boyfriend and heads for the big city, attracting the attention of Zhou Wei (Xiaodong Guo). It would have been criminal for them not to have got it on, so supersexy are they both.
Writer and director Ye Lou gives the relationship room to breathe and develop. Characters that could have been tediously pretentious are instead believable, likeable and impossible to take your eye off. And the sex scenes are fantastic. Avoiding the intrusive camerawork of many an arthouse shag, they, more than anything, capture this film's spirit of willfulness and affection.
Politics is never front and centre, but Ye Lou slowly builds a sense of dissatisfaction. Yu Hong played exquisitely by Lei Hao demands more from the world than it is able to give. She wants intimacy of all kinds with all kinds of people, male and female, yet clings to her independence. Meanwhile, agitated students are heard insisting on workers' rights as well as liberal reforms from their oppressive rulers. Idealism reigns.
So when troops open fire at Tiananmen Square, Ye Lou doesn't need to bore us with a preachy history lesson. The sense of loss is clear as Communist Party reprisals disperse Yu Hong's coterie all around the world, and the film hurtles away from that moment of clarity in 1989.
The Chinese title of the film, 'Yihe Yuan', translates literally as 'Garden of Nurtured Harmony'. Which suggests something of the fragile beauty of this impressive film.

August 15 (18.30), Cameo 1.
August 16 (19.00), Cameo 1.
£7.95 (£5.20).

http://www.palmpictures.com/film/summer-palace