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Lust, Caution
I seem to have an inverse relationship recently with Ang Lee’s movies. The more popular they are, the less excited about them I am when I see them. So when I say that Lust, Caution is, in my opinion, the best movie that he’s made since Eat Drink Man Woman, I do it with the full realization that he may as well abandon any hope of box office success—at least here in the United States. In Taiwan, I hear, it’s a blockbuster.
As well it might be. Lee has been given lots of press for having the bravery to go NC-17 with this movie. But what is remarkable about the film are not the love scenes—they are far from the most graphic or the most steamy I’ve seen in recent years. Indeed, I was afraid that, as with Brokeback Mountain, the only thing new here would be that Hollywood hadn’t seen it before, not that it hadn’t existed in countless previous films. And the sex here is hardly new—in fact, if you substitute the homosexual cowboys in Lee’s last film for the heterosexual lovers in this one, the love scenes start to look remarkably similar.
What is new is the setting. Japanese-occupied China during World War II is a place I had heard about but never fully experienced. The details of the culture create the framework of what is less a romantic espionage drama and more a psychological and philosophical examination of emotion versus idealism. The ideas are universal, but the backdrop makes the choices of Wong Cha Chi, the young woman at the center of the movie (newcomer Wei Tang), all the more complex.
To make his film, Lee utilized a set of proportions never seen before in China—soon to become a Shanghai theme park. Every inch of the film is carefully designed to create a mood sometimes reminiscent of Hitchcock, full of dark beauty in the midst of despair. In the streets people die and are unceremoniously thrown onto wheelbarrows, but in the household of Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), the privileged collaborator with the Japanese, comfort reigns.
Wong Cha Chi stumbles into the role of a naïve Mata Hari, a virgin trying to play the part of seductress in order to help murder a man guilty, in her eyes, of China's betrayal. She is trained clumsily by the fellow members of an amateur resistance cell, formerly a college theater troupe inspired to act more forcefully by enthusiastic reaction to their patriotic play.
Of course, we know from the flash forward, which starts the film, that four years later she is still immersed in her role and her mark is still very much alive. Ms. Tang plays her part with understated emotion, quietly expressing strength even in the midst of emotional tumult. The most remarkable thing about the sex scenes with Mr. Leung, excellent as usual at communicating his own repressed deep feelings, is not the exposed body parts, it is the expression in the actors' eyes.
Yet for all the visuals, this is a movie that depends on language. What is said is almost not as important as the way it is spoken and what is left out. Reading Eileen Chang’s short story that inspired the movie is like reading a code, and even in this expanded version, the code is different but still alive. Here, for once, care was taken with the subtitles, not only in the way they were phrased but in the way they were timed, an art too often ignored.
It is not coincidence, I think, that the original set of conspirators in this story is composed of actors. Art is frightening to those trying to suppress others. It is not surprising that Eileen Chang’s writing was temporarily banned in mainland China. Ang Lee is making a special cut that removes thirty minutes from his film so that mainland authorities will allow it to be shown. He is eliminating a lot of the lust, but what remains is perhaps more important—the caution.
Edward Einhorn
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