Lou Ye's "Summer Palace" is an intimate epic that works its way through recent Chinese political and social history, roughly from 1987-2001, by depicting young people's first taste of freedom and self-expression and its brutal suppression by authorities. The film has a flaw in that it is far too long, a condition easily fixed with further editing. The more immediate problem is that this Chinese-French co-production may anger Chinese censors by screening in Cannes before obtaining their approval.

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