Lust, Caution is
a wartime story of espionage and intrigue, but to call it a thriller
would be misleading. The constraints of modern moviegoers’ attention
spans don’t concern director Ang Lee, as anyone who either loved or hated 2003’s
Hulk can attest. Similarly, though the movie is rated a libidinous NC-17
(and deservedly so), neither does it flaunt its eroticism for cathartic
release. No, instead,
Lust, Caution is
a lushly photographed, exacting, slightly overlong but still mostly
involving drama about the clash of disparate forces and ethics — beauty
and cruelty, desire and fidelity, personal awakening and patriotic duty. It's also — ironically, in these tabloid times — a movie about a little girl lost, and how she finds identity, if not solace, in acting.
Based on Eileen Chang’s short story of the same name, and adapted for the screen by James Schamus and Wang Hui Ling, the film unfolds in Shanghai, and spans four or five
years during the World War II Japanese occupation of the city. As a
freshman at university left behind by her father, unassuming Wong Chia
Chi (newcomer Tang Wei, above right)
meets fellow student Kuang Yu Min (Wang Leehom), who’s drummed up a
drama society to shore up patriotism and feed the burgeoning student
resistance movement. As the theater troupe’s new leading lady, Wong
realizes that she has found her calling. Shedding her shyness, she
finds liberation in the ability to move and inspire audiences.
Quickly, though, Kuang and his company’s
quaint, bourgeois rebellion — a symbolically-infused production of Henrik Ibsen’s
A Doll’s House — gives way to a much more radical plot: to assassinate a top Japanese collaborator, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung, above left),
regarded as a traitor. To do so, they slowly infiltrate his social
circle. The scenario proceeds as scripted, until an unexpectedly fatal
twist collapses the plot. Several years later, with still no end in
sight for the occupation, Wong reunites with Kuang, now part of a more
organized resistance. Returning to her role of in a revival of
the plot to kill the paranoid Yee — who, as head of the
collaborationist secret service, has become an even more key part of
the puppet government —
Wong finishes her off seduction, striking
up a torrid affair with the brutal Yee, who proves himself a sadistic lover.
Gorgeously designed and lensed,
Lust, Caution summons forth the intrigue and quiet scheming of behind-enemy-lines dramas like
Charlotte Gray, and also (just a bit) the personal duplicity and plotting on display in something like Steven Soderbergh’s
The Good German, which also (figuratively and literally) dealt in
shades of occupied
grey. If, as the saying goes, one ultimately becomes the things that
they do,
war has a way of forcing interesting choices upon even a
civilian populace, and thus perverting individual will in not entirely
explainable ways. Maybe the most interesting film that
Lust, Caution tangentially reminded me of, though, is actually Mike Newell’s superlative
Donnie Brasco. Like that movie,
Lust, Caution
is about
the slippery slope of identity, and how one can lose oneself
in the extreme pursuit of even-handedness or justice.
Lee's film eventually plays the love card, but given that it’s a love
born out of extreme cruelty and maltreatment,
one can never be sure how sincere this change of heart is, versus the
possibility of merely “Stockholm Syndrome” identification. Clearly, Lee
believes that Wong’s journey is one of an awakening of sorts, but while
Wei gives a performance of deftly modulated
indecision,
Lust, Caution never fully convinced me of love’s bloom, just that war alters everything, at home as well on far-flung battlefields.
For the full review, from Reelz, click here.
