Lust, Caution (2007)

Brief: A group of drama students led by Kuang (Lee-Hom Wang) decide to carry their work further by infiltrating the life of Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), a high up member of the Chinese collaborative government in WWII, setting up Wong Chai Chi (Wei Tang) as his mistress, and plotting his assassination. As the plot takes longer than original intended, Wong's life (and her heart) are increasingly in danger.

The buzz on this one wasn't all that positive, but I was looking forward to seeing it anyway. If there's a team out there today that I can get behind, it's director* Ang Lee and co-writers/frequent collaborators James Schamus and Hui-Ling Wang. No matter the story they are telling, whether it's suburban subterfuge or a Civil War epic or a damn comic book adaptation, their combined ability to tap into the human emotion at the core of these stories, to explore its grand range, and to make that range seem like the most epic, operatic thing that has ever occurred is unparalleled. It's both a call to action and a call for self-reflection.

To that end, this movie is no exception. The acting is beautiful and nimble with Wai balancing menace with undernotes of sexiness and sorrow, and Wang taking Kuang from a passionate but sheepish boy to a far more measured adult. Despite all that, it's (possible**) newcomer Tang that will steal your heart. Her naïve dedication flowers into heartbreaking devotion and shatters into divided loyalties. And she does it all with her soft, dancing eyes.

So it's too bad that when the closing credits started to roll I said, "Well, that sucked." It didn't entirely suck. All the things I wrote above remain true. There are two reasons that this movie didn't make it as far as it needed to: 1) the sex scenes and 2) the decision at the climax that leads to the dénoument. As for the former, they're not indifferently filmed, nor is the sex treated as reverentially as it was in Brokeback Mountain. It's just not sexy. There's a lot of sex, and it's supposed to have a profound effect on the two characters having it over the course of the film. You can sort of see it for the one, but it never really comes through for the other, which is what makes the former hard to swallow.

Well, partially. It's not difficult to believe or understand why these two people end up caring about each other. It's that the decision she makes ends up affecting so many other people, and you know she knows exactly what will happen, and she does it anyway. But why? We never get to the heart of that decision, of why she makes it and what that means for the character. It just happens and then pow! Story done. The door closes, and we're left out. B-

*It's the Tim Burton thing all over again, isn't it? Hey, did you guys know that Ang Lee is a director?

**IMDb lists this movie as her only credit, but they aren't always as up-to-date on foreign productions.