Lust, Caution

What a movie. I saw this movie yesterday and I'm still thinking about it. Tony Leung is just awesome. I had seen him in a few movies, I'd already determined that he's a great actor. I have no problem understanding what's going on with him without reading the subtitles because he communicates so much with his eyes. So watching him in this I was curious to see that something else was coming across than you'd normally expect. Here he's playing against type and I thought he did a wonderful job. Definitely Oscar worthy. As is his costar, who I kept trying to rack my brain for a film I'd seen her in but apparently she's a newbie. You'd never know it from her performance. It's a true leading performance since she carries most of the film being in just about every minute of it. She's great. And how great was it to see Josie Packard (Joan Chen) again. :)

Ang Lee is a genius. He's so good at capturing the emotions of his characters and actors. It's like he unfolds them so that everything on the inside is laid bare. From The Ice Storm to Brokeback Mountain to Lust, Caution he shows you real people and how they love and damage and betray each other, and more specifically how it feels. That's true talent. Anyone can point a camera. This is something else entirely.

The film itself is the best espionage film I've ever seen, but that's not all it is. It's very much like a noir and a war film and romance is probably the genre that is represented least. I've read a few reviews mentioning love and falling in it. There is some of that but I think maybe those people might want to give this one another go. They might have missed the point.

Who should see this? Adults. But I'm not saying that because of the sex scenes. I'm 33. I don't know if I would have completely grasped the emotional complexity of this film 10 years ago. I think you need to have been kicked around a bit by life to fully appreciate what's happening here. Anyone who likes old movies, sad movies, good movies. Bogart fans, noir fans, costume design fans should all enjoy it. I sincerely hope it gets some recognition around Oscar time. It's my favorite this year so far.

I had been hyping myself up a great deal for Lust, Caution ever since I first heard of the project, so I'm glad to say that it did not disappoint. The film was a beautifully executed "espionage thriller," if you want to go with how it's being marketed to a broad audience. Steeped in the historically and culturally turbulent period of the second Sino-Japanese War, one must applaud Ang Lee for the dizzying array of minutiae he oversaw as director.

Because of the nature of the film's protagonist Wang Jiazhi (played by a newcomer named Tang Wei - not shabby for your first feature) as an agent working under a second identity to ensnare a dangerous collaborationist (Tony Leung), all the scenes where Wang masquerades as the bourgeois Ms. Mai are fraught with a psychological tension, doubling with the political agenda at stake as well as her womanhood. She portrays both roles with heartbreaking deftness; a great casting choice if there ever was one. While not as physically alluring as some of her competitors for the role - Chinese language actresses including Zhou Xun and Shu Qi - I don't think anyone else could have pulled it off like Tang. She convincingly transforms herself from a naive college girl to coy seductress...and back again.

The film struck quite a few personal nerves on my part too. While mainstream cinema should be, you know, self-sustaining or whatever you want to call it, there's really a lot to this movie that gets lost in subtitling to an extent, but also just in context and culture. Etiquette at the mah-jongg table; the omnipresent yet understated background of wartime occupation; political interests in the Chinese Civil War era; the weight of regional identity in dialects and interpersonal relationships. Tang Wei spoke Mandarin, Cantonese, and Shanghainese. My only thought is: What a hottie.

The sex scenes are...something else. As echoed by most critics, they serve the story perfectly in capturing the urgency that Tang and Leung have in their precarious affair. There's a lot of violence in them, and it is through these carnal and savage acts that Tony Leung's Mr. Yee character is established as a very dangerous man. I won't spoil too much but there were several times when it became too difficult to watch.

There were quite a few moments that made my heart flutter and eyes wobble. I'll just leave it at that.

Too long, too slow, too self-indulgent, and too brutal in its graphic sex scenes, Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution" is a film not to be missed.

Whatever misgivings there may be about it, this festival-winning film is a mesmerizing, rich experience. After 2 1/2 hours of being bombarded with a World War II love-and-hate story that's both exciting and dragging, chances are you will be still pinned to your seat, anxious to find out how it ends.

The "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Brokeback Mountain" director has turned his attention to war-threatened Hong Kong in 1938 and Japanese-occupied Shanghai in 1942 (complete with a "safe Japanese zone"), seen through the eyes of a group of young Chinese resistance fighters.

Based on the late Chinese-American writer Eileen Chang's short story of the same name, the focus of "Se, jie" is the relationship between Mr. Yee, head of the ruthless Japanese-collaborator security forces (played by Tony Leung, leading man of some 80 films) and a young actress with the resistance, played by Wei Tang, in her very first film role.

They make a strange pair, both in the roles and as actors. Of the story - a cat-and-mouse game between the seductress/underground agent and the Japanese puppet/lord of life and death among the occupied - the less said the better in order to enjoy the movie. As actors, it's a veteran facing a new challenge and a novice who shows great skill and assurance.

Leung has always been a brooding, symphathetic, worn-but-handsome presence, especially in his collaborations with director Wong Kai War. Here, for the first time, he plays not just a heavy, an ugly character, but a scary, unhappy, murderous man, literally a dark figure, lurking in the shadows. It's a great performance, fully realizing both aspects of the character: the monster and the man.

Lee's love for the cinema classics is shown both in his use of excerpts from Hollywood greats (as the young actress frequents movie theaters) and in his creation of memorable images. This is a director with a painterly sensibility and the ability to transform objects into instantly memorable pictures. Never will you see mahjong again without recalling "Lust, Caution." Few of Lee's favorite classics can match the simple effectiveness of his final image here, of a sheet with slight depressions left by what rested on it shortly before: white on white, and yet meaningful and affecting.

Leung and Tang fairly monopolize the screen, but the rest of the large cast is outstanding, led by San Franciscan Joan Chang as Yee's wife, and the vivid individual characters in the resistance, including the American-born Chinese pop star Leehom Wang.

A wolfhound brings out what Ang Lee so called "amuck atmosphere." This might not necessarily be Eileen Chang's intention, but Lee achieved his practical "masterpiece" through expressing his feel for this short story.

Just right before the task seems about going to end, Wang Jiazhi memorized, from an innocent college girl to a highly skilled actress and patriot, this extremely dangerous ambition kept circling around her mind and couldn't possibly go away may because of her ideal of doing something big and important, may because of proving that she's not only a puppet, or may because of a man that she can't get him out of her head.

A terrific ensemble cast. Tang Wei, who played the soul of the film, transformed herself into the leading character successfully through an unfamiliar face to audiences and has the acting of unattached perfection just like Zhang Ziyi. Though she got set up to get involved with this role by Lee, the result shows that her efforts worth every second.

The best performance of Tony Leung by far, every look and movement is very precise. Though it's also postmodern and the same kind of costumes, the effect is totally different from the images in Wong Kar Wai movies. Even he has been through several villain characters, the devotion and outcome that he put in this role is never been seen before.

As for the controversial sex scenes that gather all the spotlights, they all take important places in the film just as Lee said. Even there's no sign of sex in Chang's story. Except the power demonstration of the leading male role, Mr. Yee, Wang learned to use her sex power, the abreaction from the huge frustration of both their occupations and the struggle and joy they soaked in the functioning sex. They could very likely be the perfect match for each other that they can never find another one in this lifetime.

The second-time Mexican cinematographer for Lee, Rodrigo Prieto, French musician Alexandre Desplat, the senior Korean designer Lai Pan, and Lee's longtime partner editor Tim Squyres. The global combination achieved the great technical support besides the compelling story and the feast of performances.

The funny part is Lee chose short stories back to back for his film. The time line of the previous one goes across over 20 years. As for the latter one is just an afternoon. Sure it seems like a story in a decade, but after all they are the flashbacks of the leading female role.

This movie definitely goes beyond the achievement of "Brokeback Mountain," which is already very brilliant. While showing the conflict of sense and sensibility, it also pays tribute to a bunch of classics and the master creators which reflect the mind of the roles and are inherited such as "Casablanca," "The Godfather," "Suspicion," "Penny Serenade," "Last Tango in Paris" and "In the Realm of the Senses." This is not only the best screen adaptation of Chang to date but also a must-see of all time.

You're undercover on a mission to deceive, the worlds at war, and there's a web you need to weave, to catch a traitor who's in tow, with an invasive Nippon foe, you've caught his eye, now make him convinced and believe.

This is a spectacular piece of cinema, the colours, the flow, the story all ignite and leave a glow, the performances of the two leads is out of this world, especially from Tang Wei who goes from innocence incarnate to sensuous seducer via an awkward introduction and a brutal baptism of torture and torment, all under the direction of one of the greatest film makers of his day, leaving you under no illusion the depths people will go to in order to achieve their aims, legitimate or otherwise.