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| Images courtesy of Focus Features |
Two years after the controversy generated by his 2005
masterpiece Brokeback Mountain and years before becoming a James Cameron
tech-demo director ala Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Gemini Man,
Taiwanese born filmmaker Ang Lee would all but dwarf the controversy
surrounding the homoerotic romantic drama with his next project: the NC-17
rated Mandarin language erotic historical period drama Lust, Caution. A ferocious, daring, uncompromising
masterwork grounded in reality inspired by the story of Zheng Pingru (as
chronicled in Eileen Chang’s short story) the Chinese spy during the Second
Sino-Japanese War who launched an assassination attempt against a Chinese
intelligence agent working for the Japanese, Ang Lee’s return to Hong Kong
marks easily the filmmaker’s boldest, bravest and most thoroughly challenging
work. Even after introducing 120 frames
per second filmmaking with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, this frankly
sexually explicit historical drama pierces harder and cuts deeper emotionally,
intellectually and visually than anything else in his entire filmography.
Hong Kong, 1938 at the height of the Sino-Japanese war,
young college student Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei from Blackhat and Decision
to Leave) befriends fellow classmate Kuang Yumin (Wang Leehom) who runs a
patriotic drama club she quickly becomes the lead actress of. Touched by the playwright’s penchant for
quiet rebellion against the Imperial Japanese Army, she’s soon persuaded by
Kuang to take more drastic action in the form of an assassination plot against special
agent Mr. Yee (Tony Leung from Hard Boiled and Chungking Express)
a married Chinese man working for the Japanese occupation. Tasked with wooing Mr. Yee into a location
where she can seduce and murder him, the situation is complicated when one of
Yee’s closest comrades learns of the murder plot and the activist students are
forced to choose between life or death and Mr. Yee and his wife return to Shanghai.
Fast forward three years to Shanghai, 1942, Chia Chi runs
into Kuang again who is now working for the Kuomintang secret service in an
effort to thwart the Japanese occupation.
With news of Mr. Yee’s ascension to the highest ranks of the secret
police for the Japanese government including but not limited to Kuomintang
members being tortured and murdered, Chia Chi is tasked again with becoming the
man’s mistress in the practiced role of a wealthy trading company owner’s wife dubbed
‘Mrs. Mak’. Not long thereafter, as Chia
Chi flaunts herself to Mr. Yee, a fierce, almost feral sexual relationship
beginning violently before settling into an impassioned love affair erupts
between the two. However, the murder
plot is delayed, instilling a complex emotional conflict within herself trying
to separate her emotional attachment to the man she’s having sex with from her
commitment to the secret mission.
Jumping back and forth between the past and present, largely
seen from the perspective of the Mah-Jongg game table ‘Mrs. Mak’ plays in her
role amid other rich ladies, driven by sumptuous historical period detail
lensed with a painterly glossy eye by Rodrigo Prieto and adorned with a lush,
blooming emotional score by Alexandre Desplat, Lust, Caution is a bold
erotic drama about two secretly sworn mortal enemies falling into a torrid
romantic affair. Symbolic as it is
sexual including but not limited to emphasis on the naked body as an image of
patriotic carnal sacrifice as Chia Chi’s character uses her sexuality to engulf
her target into an inescapable spider web, it is probably the most
intellectually complex and precise of use sex onscreen as a form of violent
battle since the still-extremely difficult Last Tango in Paris which
Tony Leung reportedly studied for research on the role.
It goes without saying the lead actors in the film Tang Wei
and Tong Leung go the full distance in this movie with fearless conviction. Mostly a PG rated period drama that
eventually turns erotic, Wei is tough and endured a lot to realize this role
onscreen including breaking up with her boyfriend of three years over the film’s
indeed graphic but necessary sex scenes.
Initially suffering a blacklisting in the Chinese mainland over the film’s
sex scenes including some roles being recast with other actresses before the blacklisting
was lifted three years later, Tang Wei fully inhabits a demanding and
technically complicated role which caused her to faint at one point on
set. Ang Lee himself later admitted
working on the film’s sex scenes proved to be the most emotionally taxing
pieces of footage he ever shot for anything.
Equally strong are the supporting players like Wang Leehom as the
patriotic club leader engineering this secret mission to seduce and murder Mr.
Yee while actress Joan Chen of Twin Peaks also co-stars as Mrs. Yee.
Not an easy film to digest as it ceaselessly heads towards
emotionally and viscerally difficult scenery including a haunted finale that
will stay with you long after the film has finished, Ang Lee’s controversial
yet sumptuous $15 million NC-17 period epic became a huge hit against
expectations. Winning the prestigious
Golden Lion at the 2007 Venice Film Festival including Best Director, Best
Actor Tony Leung, Best Actress Tang Wei and Best Adapted Screenplay by Hui-Ling
Wang and James Schamus, the provocative critical darling co-financed with
American money raked in a whopping $67 million globally making it the most
profitable NC-17 film yet made. Though confrontational
and a bit more graphically carnal than you’re used to seeing in mainstream
cinema, Ang Lee’s pitch perfect masterpiece of historical period dramatic
storytelling is powerful, exhilarating and finally searing. Quite possibly the artistic pinnacle of Ang
Lee’s career, Lust, Caution won’t be to all tastes as it goes a bit
further than most other period pieces set around this timeframe. But for those willing to take the challenge,
the rewards of this still-enduring titan of cinema for adults only will
resonate with you long after the end credits have finished rolling.
--Andrew Kotwicki
