Lust, Caution

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Ang Lee's new film - his second filmed in China, after Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and his first since the acclaimed Brokeback Mountain - begins with such an intensely observed game of mahjong you half expect the Hulk to appear from underneath the table and scatter these society ladies who have so little to talk about but their husbands, business, and black market goods.

We are in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, 1942. The hostess, Mrs Yee (Joan Chen), is sitting pretty. Her husband (Tony Leung) is a powerful politician who works hand in fist with the occupation. She has no clue that their houseguest, Mrs Mak (Wei Tang) is not who she claims to be. Still less that she will soon be embroiled in a frenzied affair with her husband.

Flashback to 1938: Chia Chi Wong is a first year university student who falls in with a drama society led by the fervently patriotic Yu Min Kuang (Lee-Hom Wang). But propaganda is not enough for Kuang. He enlists a core group to help him assassinate a leading collaborator. Their leading lady, Wong becomes the bait to hook this fish and get him away from his bodyguards.

Based on a short story by Eileen Chang (whose fiction has inspired several important Chinese films, including The Flowers Of Shanghai, Eighteen Springs and Red Rose, White Rose), Lust, Caution draws on contributions from fashionable talents such as the French composer Alexandre Desplat (Birth) and the Mexican director of photography Rodrigo Prieto (Babel).

It makes for a classy package, and the film came away from the Venice Film Festival last September with the top prize, the Golden Lion.

The movie has also raised eyebrows (and headlines) with its explicit sex. (It comes with an 18 Certificate.) But Lee certainly makes you wait for it. It's about two hours before Wong/Mak finally seduces Mr Yee� At times it feels more like the three years that have elapsed on screen.

The coupling is aggressive and artfully splayed, but Yee remains grimly tightlipped in even the most compromising positions, and it's hard to care when Lee so persistently angles for tragedy when the material cries out "melodrama" with every sinew.

There is a kernel of an interesting movie here, something akin to Hitchcock's Notorious, in which Ingrid Bergman fell in love with spymaster Cary Grant but seduced Claude Rains at his behest. (Look carefully, you'll spot posters for films by Hitch, Grant and Bergman which point in this direction.)

The new film adds a cruel twist to that set up with its perverse sexuality, but unlike, say, Paul Verhoeven's Black Book, with which it shares certain plot points, Lee rarely allows us to enjoy the ride; he clamps everything down in a surfeit of sour sobriety. Clearly this repression ("caution") is intentional, and meant to amplify the passion that follows, but instead it winds up suffocating the drama completely.

Lust, Caution has a couple of strong set pieces and good performances, but it would have had more impact with 45 minutes cut out of its two and a half hour running time.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com

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Critics' Reviews

Rating of 4
stars out of 5 Wally Hammond, Time Out

Theres a superb and important early scene in Ang Lees absorbing spy romance, set on a stylised (studio-shot) Hong... read more on www.timeout.com

Members' Reviews

Reviews Voted Most Helpful

Far too slow paced!

A customer from SW London , 21/01/2008

I have to say I find listening to Chinese grating to hear for too long, but I decided to endure this and the length of this really long film because the trailer looked promising. The story of this film would have been the type to really grip me, but I confess something was missing in the film so in the end it just didn't do it for me. I guess because I was never convinced of the main actress' motivation to going to such extreme lengths to be so patriotic. In most parts the scenes were far too drawn out and slow paced. The sexual scenes were very realistic and very well acted out, and the acting from the actors were flawless, however I would have preferred to have seen the film acted in English. The story is a good one, so worth a watch. Just be aware that it's rather slow paced and unnecessarily longer than the average film.

92 out of 103 people found this review helpful

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Love & war

chungking from London [Highly rated reviewer] , 05/01/2008

A war time drama set during the Japanese occupation of China in the 1940’s. A group of Chinese students decide to form as a resistance to Japanese occupation. They target a high ranking Chinese collaborator Mr Yee, (Tony Leung), and their plan is for a young woman in their group, Wang Jiazhi (Wei Tang), to seduce him, though she has not had a lover before. Their plan fails and they disband, but are re-united three years later, now part of a larger resistance group, and with Wang Jiazhi’s help, have another chance to kill Mr. Yee. But when Wang Jiazhi starts a relationship with Mr Yee, the two of them get caught up in the intensity of their emotions.

A mature, measured, slow burning emotional espionage thriller. Like ‘Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee’s characters are imbued with love’s frailties and creeping emotional frustration. They all reach a point where in-decision, usually due to feelings they don’t want to acknowledge, costs them dear. A great film. Would make a good double bill with Paul Verhoeven's Black Book.

44 out of 44 people found this review helpful

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Amazing performances

A customer from Windermere , 22/01/2008

This film is beautifully shot, plotted and acted. Newcomer Wei Tang puts in a bravura performance as the young Chinese agent in WW11, while superstar Tony Leung broods better than ever as the powerful collaborator she aims to destroy. It seems that the pair's powerful mutual attraction will inevitably be the downfall of one of them but if so, who will it be?

This film has been criticised for being slow, and at 2.5 hours I can see that some people would find it hard going. But for me, the characters' behaviour can only really be understood in the context of the gradual build up of tension, as the both fear and attraction grow.

The graphic violence in one scene is quite disturbing, but I think violence really ought to be. It also brings home very effectively what's really at stake in this cat and mouse game.

Much has also been made of the sex in this film, but if that's why you're renting it you'll have a long wait. When it does come it is very explicit, but not gratuitous. Again, it's essential to show how passionately the characters feel about one another in order to explain their behaviour beyond the bedroom and drive the plot forward.

A bang up supporting cast helps to bolster the impression that these two characters are trapped by circumstances. And in the case of Wei Tang in particular, she's merely a pawn in a much bigger game .

Want to know if it's for you? If you saw and enjoyed the Dutch film, Black Book, this is even better.

41 out of 41 people found this review helpful

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