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There’s a superb and important early scene in Ang Lee’s absorbing spy romance, set on a stylised (studio-shot) Hong Kong tram in 1939, as a young troupe of Chinese actors board, flushed with the rousing success of that night’s patriotic play. (The Japanese have already occupied their homeland, British-run Hong Kong is soon to fall.) The exhilarated lead character Wong Chia Chi (a remarkable, film-dominating debut performance by newcomer Wei Tang) thrusts her head out the window to taste the rain, as if to make physical and personal the night’s small triumph. You see in that moment how the innocent young actress may be persuaded, in patriotic duty, to adopt an alias, spy on and seduce, in order to kill Tony Leung’s collaborationist chief of police.
You could call Lee’s Chinese-language version of Eileen Chang’s novella a revisionist wartime thriller. Its sub-Brechtian moments are muted, but it is more than happy to pay self-conscious attention to the period setting, design and clothes to highlight, in echo of David Hare’s ‘Plenty’, the seductive role of dress as disguise and mask. Like Hare (with his OAS volunteer, Kate Nelligan), Lee is interested in applying an emotional and psychological realism to his heroine’s incredible bravery. It seems, in wartime, some are able to assume grave responsibilties, but – as Lee’s film quietly and provocatively suggests – the actions of those that do make mockery of conventional, sex-based, notions of what constitutes courage, honour, love or even patriotism itself. In this sense, the real battlefield, the genuine theatre of truth, in ‘Lust, Caution’ is the bed – the sex – in the arranged flat three years later in Shanghai, something of a last tango wherein Leung’s previously almost obsequiously mannered ‘traitor’ shows his true colours, and Miss Wong, under her alias Mrs Mak, is transformed by the ever-present knowledge that discovery is death. It’s not a companionable film – Lee’s directorial discipline, objectivity and lack of expressionist touch in the use of either Rodrigo Prieto’s camerawork or Alexandre Desplat’s score can push the viewer close to outsider-dom or voyeurism – but its dark romanticism lingers in the mind.
Drama, Romance, Mystery & Suspense
Written By: Ang Lee
Written By: Hui Ling Wang, James Schamus
In Theaters: Sep 27, 2007 Wide
On DVD: Feb 19, 2008
US Box Office:$4.4M
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Lust,Caution This film is an impeccably mounted jewel that has no sparkle.It is slow and too long to develop any lustre.The main leads have no chemistry despite the fact they are involved in several naked scenes of lustful love-making. The story takes place in both Hong Kong and Shanghai. We are in Japanese-occupied China. Most of the early action takes place in the Hong Kong Chinese theatre of the Chinese students led by the student playwright,Kang. He writes patriotic plays which get e fervid response from the audience and lots of monetary support. He realizes he can do more for his occupied countrymen by forming a resistance to kill corrupt Chinese officials like Mr. Lee(Tony Leung). Chai Chi(Tang Wei) plays a central role:she must seduce Mr. Lee through being a honey trap.However he is too well guarded for them to get close.Also Chai Chi is still a virgin and is playing the role of Mrs. Mak married to a business man.She is able to infiltrate the circle of corrupt officials wives playing Mahjong around Mrs. Lee centred in the Government compound. She catches Mr. Lee’s eye and slips him her phone no.One of the members of the resistance has to break her in sexually,unfortunately not Kang, the man she is in love with. Things go wrong when a corrupt minor operator, former schoolfriend of Kang’s,gets wind of their agenda and they take ages to kill him, reminding us of a scene in Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain.This frightens off Chai Chi who returns to her studies living with her aunt.Three years later Kang meets her and says they are now under the main resistance movement of an older man and they still want to finish the job they started. She decides to rejoin them despite the dangers that the slightest suspicion will kill them all.Cells are being picked off all the time and recruited Mata Hari’s. Mr. Lee is a torturer and has people killed so his first act of love is to beat and rape Chai Chi. Yet she comes to love him and is installed as his mistress.She is under a lot of stress as she would like the resistance to finish the job as he has got under her skin. She sets up a meeting place in a jewellers where Mr. Lee has got a diamond ring made for her.However he is relatively unprotected and agents of her cell are posted all around. She warns him to go and he runs.However all the agents, herself, included are rounded up and disposed of.This is a Doll’s House of a film: all the period details and costumes have been reproduced but the spirit of adventure has left it. A Hulk-like weight has crushed it.In comparison Verhoen’s Black Book is a masterpiece of pulp noir.Caution: Ang Lee on Lust.
ReplyDeleteUnquestionably beautifully shot - perhaps too beautifully shot - this is a rather self-indulgent piece of film making, rather lacking in drama. Its lack of concern for the minor characters makes the emphasis on the leads feel somewhat hollow. the plot is pure and simple and deserved less lingering and more focus. I understand the chinese version cut out Mrs Mak's warning to Leung's character at the end, thereby saving her from an act of treachery. This would have made the film even more dully linear than it already is. So: Not bad. Truly shocking stabbing scene (again cut by the chinese) and genuinely erotic sex (also cut by chinese).
ReplyDeleteThis is one film where the sex scenes really are integral to the plot. Without them the two fatal words uttered by Wei Tang's character, which sets off the tragic chain of events at the end, would not have been plausible. I found the story interesting, the plot absorbing and the characters well drawn. Tony Leung a familiar face from director Wong Kar-Wai's films of course. A great sound track too. Lots of stars for this one.
ReplyDeleteThis is the film you either Love it or Hate it... I watched it 3 times, and I love it! You must have some understandings on the Chinese present history before you can understand the story. You must watch it not by your eyes, but by your heart. So heart breaking and so cruel.
ReplyDeleteSooo boring - great sex scene though left before the end.
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