A 35 mm print from Cineme with Dutch subtitles and e-subtitles in Finnish by Otto Pietinen viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Helsinki Festival / Lou Ye), 19 Aug 2015
The title of the film refers to the Summer Palace in Beijing (颐和园 / Yiheyuan), an UNESCO World Heritage site, "a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value" (UNESCO).
My personal favourite of the five Lou Ye films we screened in our retrospective. A large ensemble piece, an engrossing generation testimony focusing on the year 1989 at Tiananmen Square. In the tragic turning-point the company of students is split all over the world, and we follow their destinies over 15 years.
Summer Palace belongs to the key works of Chinese cinema, and to key testimonies of the cinema about world-historical turning-points. It is an inside story; we feel privileged to have such a passionate look from the inside.
A strong libido is a hallmark of Lou Ye's cinema, and nowhere more than here. Summer Palace belongs to the most open statements about high sexuality in the student life in the world cinema. It is here an expression of an irrepressible life force. Lou Ye's is a cinema of desire, about insatiable lust, its consummation depicted in many extended full frontal views.
Summer Palace is a film that needs to be seen more than once. The cast of characters is so large that it is hard to keep count of everything during a single viewing.
Lou Ye is not a master of the mise-en-scène. His approach is naturalistic and spontaneous, fiction set up as if it were non-fiction. Lou Ye is not interested in beautiful images; scenes may be ugly, seemingly shot in available light. Steadicam is a favourite device of the cinematographer.
The print is complete and good, and I feel it does justice to the visual concept of the director and the cinematographer.
OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BY PASI NYYSSÖNEN BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK
OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BY PASI NYYSSÖNEN BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK
2000-luvun puolivälissä valmistunut Summer Palace oli kiinalaisohjaaja Lou Ye’n neljäs elokuva. Esikoisohjaus Weekend Lover (Zhōu mò qíng rén, 1993) seuraa nuoren miehen elämää vankilasta vapautumisen jälkeen. Suomessakin levitykseen päässyt Suzhou (Suzhou he, 2000) on likeistä sukua Hitchcockin Takaikkunalle. Koston ja petoksen teemoja käsitellyt Purple Butterfly (Zi hudie, 2003) sijoittui Shanghaihin japanilaismiehityksen aikaan.
Shanghaissa 1965 syntynyt Lou kuuluu kiinalaisten ohjaajien kuudenteen, urbaaniin, sukupolveen. Sen edeltäjän, viidennen sukupolven ohjaajat (Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang,) ottivat anka-rat aiheensa valtavan maan maaseudusta ja pikkukaupungeista. Kuudennen sukupolven tekijät (mm. Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, Zhang Yuan) ovat puolestaan Kiinan urbaanin kokemuksen tallentaja. Heidän elokuvansa ja niiden aiheet sijoittuvat pääosin sykkiviin suurkaupunkeihin.
Lou Ye ja monet muut kuudennen sukupolven elokuvantekijät kohtasivat Pekingin valtiollisessa elokuva-koulussa ja osallistuivat 1980-luvun lopun kuohuviin tapahtumiin, jotka heijastuivat myös heidän eloku-viinsa. Summer Palace on merkittävä elokuva jo senkin vuoksi että se oli ensimmäinen mannerkiinalai-nen elokuva, joka käsitteli Tianmenin aukion verilöylyä. Summer Palace kattaa 13 vuotta, vuodesta 1988 vuoteen 2001. Historiaa käsitellään kuitenkin vain lyhyesti pikaisilla montaasijaksoilla. Loun fokus pysyy ihmisten elämässä ja arjessa, heidän henkilökohtaisessa, intiimissä kokemuksessaan.
Summer Palace keskittyy nuoreen naiseen Yu Hongiin, joka on tullut Pekingiin pienestä kaupungista läheltä Pohjois-Korean rajaa. Yu rakastuu komeaan Zhou Weihin. Suhde on intohimoinen, mutta myös väärinymmärrysten ja vastakohtaisuuksien kyllästämä. Samanaikaisesti Yun ystävyys naisopiskelijatove-riinsa tuo elokuvaan uuden eroottisen ulottuvuuden. Yu ja hänen opiskelijaystäviinsä tempautuvat mu-kaan vuoden 1989 idealistiseen opiskelijakulttuuriin. Lopulta he todistavat sekä kulttuurin että heidän elämänsä romahtavan. Ryhmän jäsenet hajoavat lopulta ympäri maailmaa Pekingistä Berliiniin pysyen kuitenkin vanhojen muistojensa vankeina.
Summer Palace toi vaikeuksia ohjaajalle. Paljastavat seksikohtaukset ja Tianmenin tapahtumien esille nostaminen olivat tulenarkoja. Lisäksi Lou toimitti elokuvan Cannesin elokuvafestivaaleille ilman Kiinan viranomaisten hyväksyntää ja hänelle langetettiin siitä viiden vuoden kuvauskielto. Tämä ei estänyt elo-kuvan leviämistä maailmalle: ulkomaille oli jo ehditty myydä 20 filmikopiota.
- Pasi Nyyssönen 19.8.2015 – lähteinä mm Gavin Huang Sex and Politics: The Portrayal of the Tiananmen Square Incident in Summer Palace, Film Studies 23: Film History IV
SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Spanning several cities and over a decade, Summer Palace tells the story of Yu Hong (played by Hao Lei), a young woman from the border-city of Tumen, who is accepted to the fictional Beiqing University, a name that evokes either Peking University ("Beida") or Tsinghua University ("Qinghua"). While in school, Yu Hong meets Li Ti, her best friend (played by Hu Lingling), and Zhou Wei, her college boyfriend and the love of her life (played by Guo Xiaodong). The film is divided into two parts. The first begins in the late 1980s (subtitles inform the audience of the place and year at various points in the film), as Yu Hong enters the university. Lonely and isolated despite the cramped living conditions, Yu Hong eventually befriends another student, Li Ti, who introduces her to her boyfriend Ruo Gu (played by Zhang Xianmin), and Ruo Gu's friend Zhou Wei. Yu Hong and Zhou Wei embark upon a passionate but volatile love affair just as political forces are moving towards Tiananmen Square.
Two events then bring the first half of the film to a close: First, Zhou Wei, incensed at the jealousy and emotional instability of his girlfriend, begins to have an affair with Li Ti; and second, the crackdown occurs on the students on Tiananmen Square and on the campus of Beida. During all of this, Yu Hong's old boyfriend Xiao Jun (played by Cui Jin) from Tumen arrives and the two of them leave, Yu Hong deciding that she will drop out from the university.
The film then fast forwards several years, as Lou Ye intersperses the travels of his three main characters with news footage of the end of the Cold War, and the 1997 Hong Kong handover. Yu Hong has left Tumen again, first for Shenzhen, and then for the central China city of Wuhan, while Li Ti and Ruo Gu have moved to Berlin. Yu Hong is unable to forget Zhou Wei, and has empty affairs with a married man and a kind but quiet mailroom worker. The film follows her disaffection with society and her use of sex as a substitute for contentment. Eventually discovering that she is pregnant, Yu Hong gets an abortion and moves to Chongqing where she marries.
Li Ti, Ruo Gu, and Zhou Wei, meanwhile, live a quiet life as expatriates in Berlin. While Li Ti and Zhou Wei still occasionally make love, the former quietly realizes that the latter does not love her. Though the three friends appear happy, when Zhou Wei plans to return home to China and settle in the city of Chongqing, Li Ti suddenly commits suicide. There he connects with former classmates who in turn point him to Yu Hong's email address.
After more than ten years, Zhou Wei and Yu Hong at last reunite in the resort city of Beidaihe. While they embrace, they ask each other, "Now what?" When Yu Hong leaves, ostensibly to buy drinks, Zhou Wei understands that they can never be together and leaves as well. (Wikipedia)
CAST FROM WIKIPEDIA:
Hao Lei as Yu Hong - the film's heroine, a young student at the fictional Beiqing University from the small town of Tumen, Jilin on the North Korean-Chinese border. Yu Hong is a willful young woman who desires to live life more intensely. Her love affair with the character of Zhou Wei serves as the basis of the film.
Guo Xiaodong as Zhou Wei - Yu Hong's love interest, another student at the same university. Something of an intellectual, Zhou Wei is both deeply in love with Yu Hong and prone to infidelity. When the Tiananmen protests arrive, he like his fellow students join in the movement.
Hu Lingling as Li Ti - Yu Hong's best friend and eventual rival. Li Ti, an English-language major at the same university, is the first to befriend the sullen, quiet Yu Hong. Though considered a cynic, she harbors a romantic side as well.
Zhang Xianmin as Ruo Gu - Li Ti's boyfriend, a student studying abroad in Berlin.
Cui Lin as Xiao Jun - Yu Hong's high school boyfriend from Tumen.
Bai Xueyun as Wang Bo - Yu Hong's lover in Wuhan. (Wikipedia)
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