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Lust, Caution (2007)

Director: Ang Lee

Time Out rating

Average user rating

16 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

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.

Author: Wally Hammond 2007-10-15 15:44:58

Time Out London Issue 1950: January 2-8 2007

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User reviews of this film

andallatonce said...

Posted on Nov 19 2008 13:47 Unquestionably 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).

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Jul 13 2008 12:15 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.

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vinny said...

Posted on Feb 07 2008 00:12 A remarkable film on so many levels. Great food for thought and definitely one that will require a second viewing.

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nash said...

Posted on Jan 29 2008 20:46 This film is like a real treat. Just watch it!

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Cass said...

Posted on Jan 29 2008 18:15 Try to observe how her face portrayed the tremendous inner conflict during and after sex.

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Dan said...

Posted on Jan 27 2008 17:31 This 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.

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Lisa said...

Posted on Jan 23 2008 16:54 amazing, extraordinary, worth to see if u mature enough ...

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Phoebe said...

Posted on Jan 22 2008 21:26 This 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.

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Stevo said...

Posted on Jan 22 2008 11:26 Sooo boring - great sex scene though left before the end.

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Lawford said...

Posted on Jan 20 2008 13:59 Sorry, couldn't get into this one, though I can see I'm in the minority

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Georgia said...

Posted on Jan 15 2008 20:57 Perfection.

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johhnym said...

Posted on Jan 11 2008 12:33 Great film, amazing director and actors. Go see...

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andy pearmain said...

Posted on Jan 09 2008 08:30 Agree with all the above - including the TO review, which makes a change. This is a compelling, complex, grown-up film, which makes great, evocative use of its historical setting; just as good, in its very different way, as the wonderful Brokeback Mountain. The much commented-upon sex is extraordinary - not so much for its rather disturbing eroticism as its total integration into the story. Not a trace of gratuitousness here - it gets to the deepest core of its participants, who set new standards in cinematic sex, and expresses the movies' basic themes of collusion and betrayal more profoundly than any amount of dialogue..

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Paul said...

Posted on Jan 06 2008 23:22 Take a packed lunch, thermos flask and switch off the mobile. This is a film to savor and enjoy a paced build up to an inevitable conclusion. What great cinema to start the year with!

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miss q said...

Posted on Jan 05 2008 13:18 It is the film that only Chinese could understand. There are so many body languages. They even communicate only by eyes... It is a film you need to think not only watch!

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