Synopsis
Summer Palace (颐和园, 2006) is a Chinese-French drama from Lou Ye that you can watch online on iFILM. It tracks one all-consuming love affair, torn apart by the same spring that shook a whole generation.
Yu Hong, played by Hao Lei, leaves a remote border village for a Beijing university and tastes freedom for the first time. There she meets a fellow student, Zhou Wei, and falls into a bond neither of them can steer or survive: desire, jealousy, breakups, and the same pull starting all over again. Beyond the campus walls, students fill the square demanding change. The spring of 1989 pries the lovers apart. Zhou leaves for Berlin, Yu stays behind, and their lives run on for years in parallel without ever meeting again.
Lou Ye films passion raw and restless, with a handheld camera, diary entries, and songs the characters grow old to. After the film screened at Cannes without official approval, the director was barred from making movies at home for five years. This is slow, heavy cinema about the moment the personal and the historical break at exactly the same spot. Stream Summer Palace (2006) online on iFILM.
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