Lust, Caution (2 1/2 Stars)
by Ed Gonzalez on September 11, 2007
Slant Magazine
Ang Lee busts a nut with Lust, Caution: All the ball sacks, pubes, and sweaty armpit hair tastefully relegated to Brokeback Mountain's off-screen space are propped front and center in this WWII-set espionage thriller, whose lustful sex scenes and enthralling performances enliven its otherwise cautious storytelling. Watching Mr. Yee (Tony Leung) and "Mrs. Mak" (Tang Wei) go at it, seemingly inspired by the Kama Sutra, you'd think they wanted to show Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist how it's really done. Lee himself seems to want to butt-fuck Paul Verhoeven's Black Book, slightly amending that film's sketchy sexual politics but flattening its stirring socio-cultural purview, ending up similarly half-cocked. Set largely in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation of the city, Lust, Caution doesn't lack for cultural specificity though it fails to sufficiently dramatize the motivating impulses of its guerrilla freedom fighters. Mrs. Mak ingratiates herself into the inner circle of Mrs. Yee (Joan Chen), ingeniously allowing the clink of mahjong pieces to identify her as an idle bourgeois creature. Her real name is Wong Chia Chi, plucked from the stage of a Hong Kong theater by the members of a patriotic drama society, and her ambition is to help this radical group assassinate Mr. Yee, a Japanese collaborator whose crimes against his homeland are as unelaborated as Wong's moral and creative inspirations.
In spite of such vagueness—maybe because of it—Lust, Caution builds excitingly to Mr. Yee and Wong's first sexual encounter, a brutal, masochistic tour-de-force delayed for a number of years after Mr. Yee unexpectedly moves to Shanghai and whose rehearsal necessitates the loss of Wong's virginity to one of her cohorts. Until now, there's no seriousness to Wong's pursuit of Mr. Yee, but the horror of having popped her cherry without the pleasure of seeing this traitor bleed in return both supercharges the woman and the film itself. Years later, while living in an impoverished Shanghai, Kuang Yu Min (Wang Leehom) comes to Wong with news that they've located Mr. Yee and the woman is, again, ready for her close-up.
Similar to Brokeback Mountain being a retreat for Ennis and Jack from the danger zone of the straight world, Lust, Caution has Wong returning, over and over again, to the comfort of movie houses, where the flicker of celluloid illuminates her perpetually teary face. (In a surprisingly funny scene, an American movie is interrupted by a newsreel that boasts of the country's resistance to Western influences, at which point Wong rolls her eyes and heads for the door.) What her affection for the movies signifies is never clear (perhaps it's only meant as a convenient contrast to Mr. Yee's fear of the dark), but when Wong meets Kuang inside a theater to give him information about Mr. Yee's whereabouts, her frustration suggests the pain of someone missing out on the communal rapture of film-going. Which is to say, love.
Wong and Mr. Yee's sexual trysts give Lust, Caution an interesting psychological nuance. Wong describes in alarming detail Mr. Yee's poisonous effect on her soul to Kuang and their superior, a man whose wife and children where killed by the blue-blooded thug. Her ferocious agency is not something the men in the room can handle, but she isn't only lashing out against them for lecturing her on loyalty and putting off their attack on Mr. Yee. Underscoring her rage is a sense that she has fallen for the paranoid Mr. Yee, which seems to stem from a perverse place of sympathy. Mr. Yee gives Wong no reason to love him, but Tang, an actress with a great future, gives haunting expression to Wong's conflictions and sense of entrapment, even as the film begins to give pathetic leverage to the notion that diamonds are a girl's best friend.
- Director(s): Ang Lee
- Screenplay: Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus
- Cast: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Tang Wei, Joan Chen, Wang Leehom, Tou Chung Hua, Chu Jr Ying, Kao Ying Hsuan, Ko Yu Lien, Johnson Yuen, Chin Ka Lok, Su Yan and He Sai Fei
- Distributor: Focus Features
- Runtime: 157 min.
- Rating: NC-17
- Year: 2007
| Category: | Movies |
| Genre: | Other |
I would bet with my penny inside my pocket right now that everyone still remember Brokeback Mountain (or the gay boys, some would say) from the director Ang Lee. This year he came out with another movie using a novel by the famous Eileen Zhang novel based on chaotic and messed up late 40's Old Shanghai and Old Hong Kong.
Not that keen to watch it in cinema, you know lah, those people inside the censorship board are so damn sensitive; China cut away 7 minutes and Malaysia bolehly cut away 10minutes, and I had a view on the leftovers with Yang. She is so Chinese, maybe that why she goes out with me, and she likes Leehom to the max, later I shall explain.
Now, the title itself is special.
Lust, and caution. Temptation and self control.
In Mandarin, it carried a slight different meaning in terms of caution; Jie simply means abstain or to avoid. Avoiding the temptation of lust? But for how long?
Synopsis:
The movie started off in a room, in the Old Shanghai with 4 taitais playing the game of Mahjong and a skinny man, husband for one of the taitai and lover for another taitai observing and making eye contacts. Smokes, the noise of the mahjong pieces hitting the table surface, the noise made by the ladies and non-verbal tongue fighting, intensity!
And as the story reels on and bits of pieces of the storyline started to fall into places.
The messed up political scenes during WWII, General Sun's pictures can be seen a few times during the show. The cracks on the international relationships; you can see westerners queuing up to obtain food subsidy and some, ended up as street prostitutes. Collaborators, or in layman term - spies were running wild. The exodus of university students from China to Hong Kong gave us the glimpse on how our two protagonists; Kuang (Leehom, Yang enjoyed his debut and literally get excited every time Leehom appears on screen) and Wang (Tang Wei). Both of them other than on the exodus, shared similarities on they experience - Kuang lost his brother in the war and Wang's father somehow abandoned her, ran to England and remarried.
With mere passion (and no experience), Kuang led a groups of teenagers where Wang was one of them, to organize some anti-Japan activities and ... The next thing they couldn't expect at all, they're chasing after a collaborator, Yee (Tony Leung), trying to get his life.
Review:
The first thing came across my mind after the show ends - hey, the gay boys is much better than this! Maybe they censored away 10minutes, maybe the color is not that sharp as Brokeback Mountain. But when Yang and I engaged in the discussion, I noticed that, hey, what an after effect! And I am still thinking about it till now, about the storyline.
Weak and timid Kuang, by Leehom.
Whenever he makes his appearance on the screen, the girl sat beside will gone out of control and start to shake me right and left.
Overall, he acted well especially playing this wimpy character who has the biggest ambition on the entire earth but doesn't have a single idea to achieve it.
If I am required to hit any girl for the sake of the country, the people and the vision, I would be more than happy to do it. But this fella shrunk off and made the heroin disappointed for a long 3 years! (Wow, girls really calculative and keep all the records huh?)
In short, he took Wang for granted. Maybe, after all, he is not into girls in this movie.
The mysterious Wang by Tang Wei.
Sometimes quite determined, sometimes she shed her tears.
Her dream and fantasy were scattered into pieces due to a wimp.
Maybe, the desire to have a romantic, touchy and memorable first time can be applied to most of the girls; with rose petals, aromatic candles, soft musics and etc. But hers was just too gruesome and heart-tearing!
"3 years ago, you can do it!" she acclaimed after expressing her feelings being the secret lover for a secret agent.
Yee by Tony Leung.
The one living with fear, survived with fear and feeding others with fear.
He would need his partner to be choked, hard to breath, tied down, crying and begging for pardon, then he can reach his climax.
Yee needed some help and Tony needs another award! Tony really deserve lots of hat-offs and applause for his splendid acts!
Lai by Chu Chih-Ying.
Supposed to be the brightest star among the guys with her maturity and skills. Too bad, she was over shined by Wang hence taking the second highest ranking for the girls. Along the movie, she shown, the emotion jealousy over Wang for all the treatments and attentions. Good actress!
Mrs. Yee by Joan Chen.
I couldn't recognized her at first till the end, until I saw her name!
Overall, I got high expectation on Ang Lee. The verdict? Brokeback Mountain would be better than this!
And, give me back my 10 minutes!
Numbers:
1) Ghost Rider
2) The Beat That My Heart Skipped
3) Pan's Labyrinth
4) Bridge to Terabithia - HIGHLY recommended.
5) Meet The Robinsons
6) Mr Bean's Holiday - unbelievable-ly heart-warming
7) The Number 23
8) Wild Hogs
9) Paradise Now
10) Border Town
11) Die Hard 4.0
12) Fracture
13) Ratatouille
14) Road to Dawn
文章定位：
