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. 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.<BR><BR>Quickly, though, Kuang and his company’s <B>quaint, bourgeois rebellion</B> — a symbolically-infused production of Henrik Ibsen’s <EM>A Doll’s House</EM> — 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 — <B>Wong finishes her off seduction, striking up a torrid affair with the brutal Yee, who proves himself a sadistic lover</B>.<BR><BR>Gorgeously designed and lensed, <EM>Lust, Caution</EM> summons forth the intrigue and quiet scheming of behind-enemy-lines dramas like <A href=)
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. (Focus, NC-17, 158 minutes)
Daily Archives: October 12, 2007
Tim Roth Says Something About The Incredible Hulk
At a press day on Friday chatting up his turn in Francis Ford Coppola‘s Youth Without Youth, Tim Roth also found time to briefly mention The Incredible Hulk, in which he plays heavy Emil Blonsky opposite Edward Norton, for director Louis Leterrier.
“It’s fun, it’s a kids’ movie,” says Roth nonchalantly, with a smile and wave of the hand. “I did it for my kids, it’s really good fun. We’re still shooting it, so that’s why I can’t talk about all of it. I know when actors say, ‘It’s fun,’ it’s usually just bullshit for journalists, but it really is — I mean, I’m running around going ‘Grrrrr…’ with guns. Hopefully my kids think I’m going to be cool when they see it.” The Incredible Hulk is slated for release next summer, June 13, from Universal.
Francis Ford Coppola on Tetro
Chatting with Francis Ford Coppola at a press day today for Youth Without Youth, the legendary filmmaker also talked some about his next project behind the camera, Tetro. “It’s the name of a character. It’s very personal, kind of my Tennessee
Williams period,” he says. “I want to make a passionate story about brothers and
fathers and all of that different tumult that I’ve seen at different
times in my life — a little bit stuff I’ve seen in my family, but it’s
totally fictional.”
Confirming the casting of Matt Dillon and Maribel Verdu, Coppola also says that Javier Bardem’s role is “not that big,” and that the film — previously scheduled to start shooting next month — will now begin lensing in Buenos Aires immediately after Christmas. “I’ve used Youth Without Youth
as a crutch to get into a world of personal filmmaking, where I’m not
subject to the notes of studios. I get the notes from my colleagues,”
says Coppola. “It’s not that I don’t want notes — I do. But I don’t
want too many notes, to (the point) that they start contradicting themselves, or that
they start turning it into one of the typical movies that comes out
every Friday.” If Youth Without Youth is any indication of his new direction, Coppola needn’t worry about that.
The Stendhal Syndrome
An overlong and wildly uneven film and yet still in some ways one of the more brutally effective films of horror maestro Dario
Argento’s latter-day canon, The Stendhal
Syndrome stars the director’s daughter, Asia Argento, as a policewoman
tracking down a violent serial killer and rapist. While trading chiefly in procedural
elements not typically a part of Argento’s more explicit zombie horror flicks,
the film still manages to showcase the filmmaker’s sensory flair and great touch
in eliciting queasiness through stabbing shock.
, a beautiful<br />
detective following the bloody trail of a sophisticated serial criminal (<i style=)
The Pianist’s Thomas Kretschmann)
through the streets of
Along the way, she falls victim to a strange, hallucinatory phenomenon which
causes her to lose her mind and memory in front of powerful works of art (above).
Trapped in this twilight realm, Anna plunges deeper and deeper into sexual
psychosis, until she comes to know the killer’s madness more intimately than
she ever imagined.
The Stendhal Syndrome
takes what might be characterized as a few Hitchcockian elements — an imperiled
woman, a strange psychological impairment, psychosexual perversion and mirrored
identities — and places them in a blender. It’s obvious that the movie wants to
also summon forth, in its own way, elements of The Silence of the Lambs and the mid-1980s oeuvre of Shannon Tweed,
but the execution here is merely so-so for vast swatches of the movie’s
two-hour running time, and the fairer Argento, just 20 when The Stendhal Syndrome was filmed over a
decade ago, is a bit too young to pull off the necessary gravitas of a seasoned
police inspector. Anna’s hallucination sequences employ some relatively low-tech
digital effects work, but it works in a way that’s not entirely corny. That said, there’s too much wild overreaching for parallelism here for things to cohere on a structural level. Yet while it doesn’t measure up to Suspiria or Inferno, moments in the film retain papa Argento’s visceral pop
and effectiveness, so much so that certain scenes from The Stendahl Syndrome stuck with me in lingering fashion long
after its initial viewing.
Spread out over two discs and housed in a clear Amray case
with cardboard slipcover, the movie is presented in 1.66:1 widescreen, enhanced
for 16×9 televisions. There are five audio options, three in English (6.1 DTS-ES,
which requires a DTS decoder, as well as Dolby surround 2.0 and Dolby digital 5.1
surround EX.
including interviews with Argento, special effects director Sergio Stivaletti, assistant
director Luigi Cozzi, production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng and “psychological
consultant” Graziella Magherini, whose book on the titular condition inspired
Argento to tackle the film.
To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B (Disc)