Lust, Caution (DVDrip - 2007)
Eileen Chang's 49-page short story of the same name unfolds onscreen as 2½ heady and dense hours in the lives of the collaborators and insurgents in Japanese-occupied Shanghai and Hong Kong, with layer upon layer of intrigue, betrayal and politics -- both governmental and sexual -- woven into the story that portrays a period few Western audiences ever see in the cinema.


A film filled with great beauty and danger, Lust, Caution might end up as the definitive film on pre-Revolution Shanghai, its decadence and brutality, its glamour and hidden debauchery. The ever-surprising Ang Lee has followed his masterpiece Brokeback Mountain with another film about the frail and elusive connections that bind us together as human beings. This new film also enjoys that reflective but confident tone that powers the strong emotions he elicits from his characters and audiences alike. Lee has a habit of alternating Chinese- and American-based projects; it feels like each time he moves across the Pacific, the level of sophistication and insight he brings to the cinema just gets stronger.

Radiant, humble young Wang (sublime ingenue Tang Wei) has fled her village for Hong Kong during the Second World War. She joins a patriotic theatre troupe at her university, and they quickly become a tightly knit group of friends and comrades. Wang’s wrenching performances rally supporters to the cause, but the troupe soon tires of confining their activism to the stage. They plan a perilously bold act of resistance that will change their lives forever.

Through an acquaintance, the novice freedom fighters plot to infiltrate the social lives of Mr. Yee (a feral Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and his mah-jong-playing wife (Joan Chen) by casting Wang as a bourgeois merchant’s wife. Yee is a rising star in the “lapdog” collaborationist government, and the virginal Wang will become his mistress so that the gang can assassinate him. Now undercover as Mrs. Mak, she succeeds in catching Yee’s eye, but fate intervenes and he is posted to Shanghai. A few years later, when Yee is the head of the secret service, their scheme is resuscitated and the film’s plot goes into white-knuckle overdrive. Soon “Mrs. Mak” is in way over her head with the dapper and sadistic Yee – his idea of intimacy is a violent one indeed – and loyalties are torn asunder.

Highly sexually charged, the film pushes Tang and Leung to their physical and emotional limits as Wang and Yee, and they rise to the challenge: their scenes together are exquisitely shocking. With his impeccable visual design, Lee expertly ratchets up the tension until the explosive conclusion. With Lust, Caution, this always provocative filmmaker bracingly evokes the high-stakes worlds of sexual obsession and the underground anti-fascist resistance, all against the intoxicating backdrop of a Shanghai lost but forever in our memories. ~Noah Cowan – Toronto International Film Festival 2007

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