Lust, Caution (2007)
(Se, jie)
Country: TAI/US/HK/CHI
Technical: DeLuxe 158m
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Tony Leung, Tang Wei, Joan Chen
Synopsis:
An actress who forms part of a politically engaged theatre troupe in Hong Kong at the outbreak of hostilities during the Second World War is used to seduce a senior member of the collaborationist civil service with the aim of facilitating his assassination. When the project misfires and years later she finds herself in Shanghai with the same protagonists, she is again called upon to play Mata Hari, this time for the official Chinese Resistance.
Review:
A story of compromised human relations which bears a superficial resemblance to Verhoeven's Black Book, but which is as different in tone and handling as that director's other work is from Ang Lee's. Here the preoccupations are for the nature of the sentimental contract which ensues, even when a relationship is initially as one-sided and exploitative as this one. Gradually mutual dependence sets in, until the hapless heroine is left unprepared for the role she has taken on. The pace is slow enough to allow familiarity with the characters and understanding of what might otherwise appear as contradictions in their behaviour. The sex scenes are unusually frank for a Chinese production, and necessarily so, for they leave us as sure as Wong evidently is of her lover's special intimacy, and of the 'promise made between such sheets'. Not for nothing is the last shot of the empty bed formerly occupied by the lovers.
(Se, jie)
Country: TAI/US/HK/CHI
Technical: DeLuxe 158m
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Tony Leung, Tang Wei, Joan Chen
Synopsis:
An actress who forms part of a politically engaged theatre troupe in Hong Kong at the outbreak of hostilities during the Second World War is used to seduce a senior member of the collaborationist civil service with the aim of facilitating his assassination. When the project misfires and years later she finds herself in Shanghai with the same protagonists, she is again called upon to play Mata Hari, this time for the official Chinese Resistance.
Review:
A story of compromised human relations which bears a superficial resemblance to Verhoeven's Black Book, but which is as different in tone and handling as that director's other work is from Ang Lee's. Here the preoccupations are for the nature of the sentimental contract which ensues, even when a relationship is initially as one-sided and exploitative as this one. Gradually mutual dependence sets in, until the hapless heroine is left unprepared for the role she has taken on. The pace is slow enough to allow familiarity with the characters and understanding of what might otherwise appear as contradictions in their behaviour. The sex scenes are unusually frank for a Chinese production, and necessarily so, for they leave us as sure as Wong evidently is of her lover's special intimacy, and of the 'promise made between such sheets'. Not for nothing is the last shot of the empty bed formerly occupied by the lovers.
(Se, jie)
Country: TAI/US/HK/CHI
Technical: DeLuxe 158m
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Tony Leung, Tang Wei, Joan Chen
Synopsis:
An actress who forms part of a politically engaged theatre troupe in Hong Kong at the outbreak of hostilities during the Second World War is used to seduce a senior member of the collaborationist civil service with the aim of facilitating his assassination. When the project misfires and years later she finds herself in Shanghai with the same protagonists, she is again called upon to play Mata Hari, this time for the official Chinese Resistance.
Review:
A story of compromised human relations which bears a superficial resemblance to Verhoeven's Black Book, but which is as different in tone and handling as that director's other work is from Ang Lee's. Here the preoccupations are for the nature of the sentimental contract which ensues, even when a relationship is initially as one-sided and exploitative as this one. Gradually mutual dependence sets in, until the hapless heroine is left unprepared for the role she has taken on. The pace is slow enough to allow familiarity with the characters and understanding of what might otherwise appear as contradictions in their behaviour. The sex scenes are unusually frank for a Chinese production, and necessarily so, for they leave us as sure as Wong evidently is of her lover's special intimacy, and of the 'promise made between such sheets'. Not for nothing is the last shot of the empty bed formerly occupied by the lovers.