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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Lust, Caution

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#1 of 1 Posted 9/30/07 5:48 PM

From harveykarten Posts 798 Last Feb-7
To All [Msg # 22666.1 ]

LUST, CAUTION (Se, jie)

Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
Focus Features
Grade: B+
Directed by:    Ang Lee
Written By: Wang Hui-ling, James Schamus, from Eileen Chang’s short story
Cast:   Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Tang Wei, Joan Chen, Wang Leehom, Anupam Kher, Chu Tsz-ying
Screened at: Lincoln Plaza Cinema, NYC, 9/30/07
Opens: September 28, 2007

When a powerful country occupies the land of a vulnerable nation, the people in the latter group generally make their accommodations with the occupying power in order to get on with their lives as though little had changed. There are two notables exceptions. One involves members of the losing party who collaborate with the victors in return for power and money–though some might rationalize by saying “we’re better off being governed by our own kind than by the enemy” as did members of the collaborationist Vichy government in war-torn France. The other consists of the real heroes, the resistance: those who risk their lives in order to inflict punishment on the occupiers in the hope eventually of driving them out. “Lust, Caution” deals with all. Most Chinese in Shanghai make the best of a bad situation by acting as though had changed, like Anupam Kher, an Indian jeweler dealing his expensive wares on the second floor of a Shanghai business. A few led by the youthful and handsome Kuang Yu-Min (Wang Lee-Hom), conspire to assassinate Chinese leaders working for the Japanese occupation forces. Kuang is secretly in love with a fellow university student, Chih-ying chu (Tang Wei), whom he recruits into the underground with a plan to have her seduce the loathsome Mr. Yee (Tony Yeung), a traitor given a high government position in Shanghai by the Japanese. (For a full description of the situation in occupied Shanghai, read the eleven essays in “Chinese Collaboration with Japan 1932-1945,” edited by David P. Barrett and Larry N. Shyu.)

Ang Lee’s work is a long film inspired by a short story of Eileen Chang, scripted by Wang Hui-ling and James Schamus. The central conceit is similar to that of Paul Verhoeven’s far more action-oriented and excellent “Black Book,” which features a Jewish singer who infiltrates the Gestapo headquarters via a sexual relationship with one of its high officials. The aim of the Shanghai resistance is to have the beautiful, sophisticated and shy Chi-ying seduce Mr. Yee, throwing off guard a man who is so fearful of assassination that he refuses even to go to movie theaters because of the darkness. She joins the mahjong group of Mrs. Yee (Joan Chen) and other ladies who lunch, a bourgeois gang that talk forever about the Hong Kong shopping that they miss so terribly.

Chih-ying’s meetings with Mr. Yee proceed from simple companionship to (pardon the oxymoron) consensual rape, then to a move loving series of liaisons between collaborationist and resistance fighter. Should anyone wonder why this movie broke box office records in Hong Kong and Taipei and–judging by the full house at the early screening on opening weekend at New York’s Lincoln Plaza theater–consider the scenes that gave the pic its NC-17 rating. The sex between Chih and Yee come across like the introduction of a new volume of the Kama Sutra, as the two nude bodies go at it from position that chiropractors never knew existed. Those looking for more violent action must content themselves with just a botched stabbing of a fellow who wants hush money from the resistance unit, threatening to turn in all the names. The vast majority of “Lust, Caution” leans toward the caution side, as the ladies play mahjong, the man gets a custom-made suit, sitting with it and smoking, and the run-down streets of thje Shanghai neighborhood including the Japanese section with its geisha house are exhibited by photographer Rodrigo Prieto with the pedicabs, the cars with split windshields, and the shops which remain opened as though nothing of a political change is going on. Hardly any Japanese soldiers are seen, adding strength to the idea that the invaders would have a tougher time controlling the city were it not for the collaborationists.

With a leisurely pace consistent with Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain,” “Lust, Caution” is an elegant exercise in chess-like gamesmanship which, despite the relative absence of heavy physical action has a script that is crammed with suspense and is graced with a powerful performance by Tang Wei, a beautiful twenty-eight year old in her debut feature performance. While much is known by moviegoers about the resistance movements in Europe, particularly by the French whose country was governed partly by the hateful Vichy regime, “Lust, Caution” is that rare event that enlightens all about similar activities in China’s major city–enlightenment with a high degree of entertainment as well.

Rated NC-17.    157 minutes   © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Lust, Caution

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