Lust, Caution (Widescreen Edition)
by Ang Lee
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Chung Hua Tou, Joan Chen, Lee-Hom Wang, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Wei TangDirector: Ang Lee
Brand: Universal Studios
Writer: Eileen Chang
Writer: Hui-Ling Wang
Writer: James Schamus
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Mandarin Chinese (Original Language); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 159 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2010-08-22
Audience Rating: NC-17
Studio: Universal Studios
Movie Reviews of Lust, Caution (Widescreen Edition)
Movie Review: 'Lust, Caution' ,Tony Leung and Eileen Chang
Summary: 5 Stars
I missed the movie in the local theaters. Before finally watching the newly released DVD at home last weekend, I had already heard much about it. Even though I avoided reading reviews, words came into my ear from unavoidable friends. No surprise would have been left, or so I thought.
When the movie finished, I found myself in an upset state. I stayed up late trying to figure out what was so disturbing. It isn't the sex scenes that everyone is talking about. It is the execution, the never finished execution of the students that include Mrs. Mak (Tang Wei). My unwriterly refusal lingered until well after: isn't he going to spare her life, as she did his?
The answer, of course, is obvious. We Chinese have a ready adage for this - "not cruel, not man," not to mention that issuing execution orders is part of Mr. Yee's profession. The question then is why I should be so shocked.
It is Tony Leung's melancholic eyes.
That night I searched on the internet and found Eileen Chang's original story in Chinese, in which the reputed 1940s author wrote the key reversal moment (my translation):
[His smile at the moment is without the slightest irony, only a bit of sadness. His silhouette from the table lamp, his eyes cast down, eyelashes like rice-colored moth wings, resting on his lean face, and she sees tenderness and compassion in his look.
This man is really in love with me, she suddenly thinks. A bang on her heart, something lost.
Too late.
The store owner hands him the receipt. He slides it in his pocket.
"Go, quick," she says in a low voice.]
Nothing could have reproduced those subtle words of Eileen Chang's like Tony Leung's melancholic eyes. The incongruity of Mr.Yee's inside and outside is a source of shock. The man is capable of being poetic and cruel at the same time, and true to both, while the woman, in an inexplicable and critical moment, chooses to see only the former but not the latter. The very source of tragic consequence.
Interestingly, the story is only an artful and symbolic rendition of Eileen Chang's real love life. An extremely happening writer in 1940s China, whose legendary life later ended with loneliness in 1995 Los Angeles, Eileen Chang's most-talked-about love was with Hu Lancheng. She was 24, and Hu was a 38-year-old married man. Like the story, he worked for the Japanese occupiers and thus was a "traitor to the Chinese." That did not matter to Chang. She was in love with the man, not his job. Unlike the story, their separation later was not due to political stance, but the man's infidelity. Yet his silhouette stayed with her for a long time.
Chang wrote "Lust, Caution" in 1950's Shanghai, not long before she fled China for fear of political persecution. There might have been a personal reason for the story's ending of Mr. Yee's betrayal and Mrs. Mak's destruction.
Though there are many modifications by Ang Lee of the namesake story, for example Chang pens no explicit sex scenes or violence, Ang Lee is artistically loyal to Chang's original ending. The undisplayed execution has a deep impact on audience psychology. As long as we haven't heard the gun shots, our hallucination of humanity is kept alive. The longer the hallucination lasts, the harder the blow when it disintegrates.
(See Eileen Chang's photo and bio link on my blog "Inside-Out China")
Summary of Lust, Caution (Widescreen Edition)
Provocative, thrilling and passionate, Lust, Caution is the daring new film from acclaimed Academy AwardŽ-winning director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Set against the backdrop of a transforming country, a young woman finds herself swept up in a radical plot to assassinate a ruthless and secretive intelligence agent. As she immerses herself in her role as a cosmopolitan seductress, she becomes entangled in a dangerous game that will ultimately determine her fate. Erotic, breathtaking and suspenseful, this award-winning film is being called "exquisitely beautiful" (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) and "lushly sensual" (Leah Rozen, People).Lust, Caution, Ang Lee's follow up to Brokeback Mountain, for which he won the Academy AwardŽ for Best Director, continues his exploration of people with a passion for each other trapped in a world where their passion could be life-threatening, but in a very different context this time. Set in China during the Japanese occupation of early World War II, the underlying plot concerns the story of young Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei), an actress and member of a small group of student resistors planning to infiltrate the home of Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), a high-ranking collaborationist government official, in order to kill him for his role in the torture and executions of Chinese resistance fighters. Chi ingratiates herself with Yee's wife, the sophisticated and cultured Mrs. Yee (Joan Chen) under the guise of being the wife of a wealthy but unseen tycoon. Flashbacks tell the tale of how Chi came to be involved with the resistors: her acting ability is her most valuable asset, and her assignment is to act the role of Mr. Yee's lover, right down to the sex. The story of their love and the painful intimacy it involves for both of them is told through their sexual relationship, which starts out violently, drifts into S&M, and shifts with their feelings, moving from pain and fear to some sort of desperate connection. This is lust with a capital L; the film's sex scenes have become famous for their frankness and acrobatic portrayals (they took 12 days to film), but amazingly enough, it's never prurient. The nature of their sexual relationship, and not the sex itself, is the point. Chi falls in love with the man she's supposed to kill, but there is no stopping the mission and she knows it. The danger of it all collapsing for them both is ever present, and that's the Caution. The cinematography and direction in Lust, Caution is masterful, and every scene is beautiful. The film does drift into a languid pace, and at times one wonders why Lee would feel the need to draw it out at the expense of delaying the crucial climactic scenes. Still, it's a wonderful piece of storytelling that should only help solidify Ang Lee's place in cinematic history as a master of films that express the difficulty of being essentially human in an inhumane world. --Daniel Vancini
Stills from Lust, Caution (click for larger image)
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