Lust, Caution

Year: 2007
Genre: Drama
Directed: Ang Lee
Stars: Wei Tang, Tony Chiu Wai Leung, Joan Chen, Leehom Wang, Tsung-Hua Tuo, Zhi-Ying Zhu, Ying-Hsuan Kao, Lawrence Ko, Johnson Yuen, Kar Lok Chin, Yan Su, Saifei He, Anupam Kher
Production: Focus Features

On its face, Lust, Caution should be a heavy film composed of worthwhile themes. Set in China during and in the aftermath of Japanese WWII occupation, the film certainly has a lot to work with. Add to that an espionage tinged love angle, a competent director in Ang Lee and a two and a half hour run time, surely Lust, Caution is given a wide enough birth to become the finest of Far East imports. Sadly, despite some strong performances and adornment, the film ultimately feels shallow and inert.

The film begins with the enigmatic Mrs. Mai (Tang) calling resistance fighters just before an assassination attempt on Chinese collaborator Mr. Yee (Chiu-Wai). We then flash back to 1938 Hong Kong where the buxom Mai is but a humble, virginal student named Jiazhi who has passion for theater. Due to the Japanese invasion, Jiazhi connects herself with the shambling local resistance fighters and begins to spy on Mr. Yee. The plan; gather information and kill the man by impersonating the wife of a Hong-Kong based trading company. What begins as a simple mission turns more complicated when a love triangle forms between Mr. Yee, Jiazhi and Kuang (Leehom) a fellow student and adamant true believer in Chinese resilience.

Despite a few widely framed soldiers, the Japanese are conspicuously absent from the film. The only presumed enemy is Mr. Yee and to a much lesser extent his absent-minded wife (Chen). Jiazhi as Mrs. Mai sits with Mrs. Yee in elongated games of Mahjongg, picking up tiny pieces of gossip while the man of the house shuttles back and forth between work and home. Mai's attempts to woe her mark builds a low humming tension giving the film much needed atmosphere. It's the type of atmosphere one would expect from many of the Hollywood films Jiazhi goes to see in the movie theater though it's closest influence would arguably be Hitchcock's Notorious (1946).

Difference is, the plot eventually got going in Notorious. In Lust, Caution, the stakes of Jiazhi's gambit don't really hit home until halfway through the film. The midriff of the movie reaches a crescendo in a moment of shocking violence followed by nothing that really brings new insights or complications. It's like watching an elaborate juggling act only the performer is doing one impressive feat for thirty minutes. Sure, it's exciting at first but after a while you're thinking, "Is that it?"

When the romance is finally consummated (albeit in a sexually violent way), years have passed. The resistance evolved from a group of students into an interconnected web of lies and self-preservation. Yet through it all Mrs. Mai and Mr. Yee drift and reconnect with all the urgency of a tortoise documentary on pause. Their listless dance of seduction and deceit is punctuated by drawn-out moments of un-stimulated sex whose decadence calls attention to itself and distracts from the story. No doubt, Lee's reverence to the physical form is artistically full of merit and the warm palettes of the room where the characters play out their tryst could infuse effortlessly in a better film; but here it feels mechanical. Neither does the sex (which garnered the film its NC-17 rating) compliment the films themes of foreboding and tragedy. The story becomes downright Sophoclean yet the visuals are vivacious and stuffy.

Lust, Caution went on to sweep up all the major awards at the Venice Film Festival and was hailed during it's time as sensual, vibrant, beautiful looking espionage drama. Well not to put my head in the Golden Lion's mouth, but I take exception to the film being called sensual; pretty: maybe, but sensual: no. Sensuality implies carnal gratification of the senses. There's nothing really gratifying about ten minutes of sex scenes involving two disengaged characters trying to stem the looming specter of death and anguish. If anything Lust, Caution is a sad movie, or at least should have been if it wasn't fighting itself.

Final Grade: D+