Watch This: 'Summer Palace'

140 minutes. Not rated.

Lou Ye's "Summer Palace" offers an unprecedented look at alienated Chinese college students during the turbulent late 1980s. The film's main protagonist, Yu Hong (Hao Lei), leaves her village to attend Beijing University. There she experiments with both sexual and political freedom, as Yu and her friends join the massive student demonstrations for democracy that culminated in a crackdown at Tiananmen Square in 1989. But when Yu's lover is sent to a military camp after the demonstrations are crushed, they part. Yu moves around in China, working at alienating jobs, conducting listless affairs, while her lover moves to Berlin. DVD extras include the documentary "Chinese Censorship."

-- Sacramento Bee