BEIJING – The only Asian entry for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival is likely to be pulled from the competition before its first screening today after permission for it to be shown was refused by China’s powerful censors.

The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television said “Summer Palace” failed to meet technical standards – the picture was “too fuzzy” and the sound quality poor.

But there has been previous speculation that the film was facing difficulties because of its content: a love story set partly against the background of the Tiananmen Square protests and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

The shooting of hundreds of civilians in 1989 is a banned topic in the Chinese press.

The publicity material for the film on the festival Web site describes it as opening against a “volatile Chinese backdrop of political unrest” and adds that the lovers’ relationship “becomes one of dangerous games, as all around them, their fellow students begin to demonstrate, demanding democracy and freedom.”

It is the director Lou Ye’s second brush with the censors. In 2000 he was banned from filming for two years after he showed his most famous work, “Suzhou River,” at overseas festivals without permission.

Mr. Lou is one of a number of Chinese filmmakers trying to come out from “underground” and work within the censorship system to push the boundaries of what can be legally seen in China.

They have been helped by the growing fashion for Chinese and other Asian filmmakers in the West. More and more directors are now making mainstream work with the approval of the government, having previously been subject to a variety of “banning” orders.