Reception
Summer Palace was screened at several international film festivals, most notably Cannes, where it was the only Asian film in competition. However, the Palme d'Or eventually went to the Irish film, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, directed by Ken Loach. Besides Cannes, Summer Palace was also screened at a handful of top-tier festivals including Toronto and Mill Valley.
Critics were generally positive in reviews, citing the film's ambition and scope with the most common complaint being the film's excessive length at 140 minutes. Derek Elley of Variety claimed the film was "half an hour too long." The Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, also mentioned the "thirty minutes too long" complaint but stated that the film was nevertheless a "a raw and unsettling new work." The Guardian also found the film "over-long and meandering," but also "stylish atmospheric."
The New York Times gave a particularly glowing review for the film with film critic A. O. Scott writing that "... its 2-hour-20-minute length, 'Summer Palace' moves with the swiftness and syncopation of a pop song. Like Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s, Mr. Lou favors breathless tracking shots and snappy jump cuts, and like Mr. Godard’s, his camera is magnetized by female beauty."
The film was released unrated in the United States. Several American film critics have described Summer Palace as one of the most sexually-explicit films in years; indeed David Denby of The New Yorker noted that he never seen so much lovemaking in an "aboveground" film, however, he also noted that these scenes are not pornographic, that is, never separated from emotion. Joshua Rothkopf and V.A. Musetta speculate that the male and female full-frontal nudity caused the ban in China.
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