Lust, Caution: Lee's latest epic
Allison Michalski
Issue date: 11/14/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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Se, jie (Lust, Caution) is a most appropriate title for Ang Lee's newest masterpiece.
Lust, Caution is the story of a young girl, Wang Jiazhi, lost in the chaos of Shanghai and Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation of China in the Second World War. After the death of her mother, Wang's brother and father flee the country leaving the fearless child in the care of an Aunt. She spends her days neglected by the self-concerned relation who allows Wang only the luxury of an education. While at school, Wang discovers a powerful asset: her talent as an actress. As the winds of nationalism sweep through the streets of Hong Kong, she finds herself swept up in the whirling tangle of a student resistance group.
Wang emerges as the junior assignation squad's most valuable member: Mak Tai Tai. Still very young and na've, she attempts to infiltrate the bedroom of China's most corrupt police administrator, Mr. Lee. Working her way into Lee's secret circle by way of Mahjong games with his wife, Mak Tai Tai plays the wife of an importer as Wang Jiazhi fades into the past.
With Wang in the distance, the director spends the majority of the film depicting Mak's tumultuous, and certainly NC-17 worthy, affair with Lee. She becomes desperate as the affair continues, hoping only for a way out of the breadlines in an occupied nation. Eventually, Mak must make a decision between Wang's freedom and the affair with Lee, between herself and the cause, between life and death.
Ang Lee's vision of Lust, Caution is almost as beautiful as it is sad. With trademark Lee shots, he shows the immense and amazing character of China during the early twentieth century. Panoramic shots of nature (the water, sun, mountains) are striking and set against stylized vignettes of small paper fans, sexy cigarette smoke trails wafting through the air and Hong Kong's bustling city streets. The immense beauty of the film, however, sharply contrasts the ugly brutality of Mak and Lee's affair.
Lust, Caution is the story of a young girl, Wang Jiazhi, lost in the chaos of Shanghai and Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation of China in the Second World War. After the death of her mother, Wang's brother and father flee the country leaving the fearless child in the care of an Aunt. She spends her days neglected by the self-concerned relation who allows Wang only the luxury of an education. While at school, Wang discovers a powerful asset: her talent as an actress. As the winds of nationalism sweep through the streets of Hong Kong, she finds herself swept up in the whirling tangle of a student resistance group.
Wang emerges as the junior assignation squad's most valuable member: Mak Tai Tai. Still very young and na've, she attempts to infiltrate the bedroom of China's most corrupt police administrator, Mr. Lee. Working her way into Lee's secret circle by way of Mahjong games with his wife, Mak Tai Tai plays the wife of an importer as Wang Jiazhi fades into the past.
With Wang in the distance, the director spends the majority of the film depicting Mak's tumultuous, and certainly NC-17 worthy, affair with Lee. She becomes desperate as the affair continues, hoping only for a way out of the breadlines in an occupied nation. Eventually, Mak must make a decision between Wang's freedom and the affair with Lee, between herself and the cause, between life and death.
Ang Lee's vision of Lust, Caution is almost as beautiful as it is sad. With trademark Lee shots, he shows the immense and amazing character of China during the early twentieth century. Panoramic shots of nature (the water, sun, mountains) are striking and set against stylized vignettes of small paper fans, sexy cigarette smoke trails wafting through the air and Hong Kong's bustling city streets. The immense beauty of the film, however, sharply contrasts the ugly brutality of Mak and Lee's affair.
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