Lust, Caution directed by Ang Lee
What is Lust, Caution? A wartime espionage thriller? A period drama? An intense piece of erotica? A strange love story? It's all these things, brought together into a compelling story: put together superbly, performed well, and altogether very accomplished.
It's set in occupied Hong Kong and Shanghai during the war. Wong (played by Tang Wei) gets involved in a student drama group and, after a small success as leading actress in a patriotic play, is drawn by the charismatic director Kuang into the resistance against the Japanese occupiers. Her new role is that of the bored young wife of a Hong Kong businessman: her job, to become the lover of Mr. Yee, a senior official, then chief of police for the collaborationist Kuomintang government. And to lure him to his death.
Wong's performance is superb - and the performance-within-a-preformance is an important theme of the film, as we lose a sure sense of what is true, what false. Yee (well played by Tony Leung, I thought) is soon in her power. But power, too, plays tricks in Lust, Caution because Yee has his own way of controlling Wong, and a brutal way, too, of showing her his power, in an astonishingly scene of sexual violence that is bound to cause strong reactions. Yee is playing a dangerous role of his own, interrogating and torturing captured resistance agents, including those who've plotted to kill him: he knows that any unguarded moment may be his last, just as Wong knows one mistake will bring her death.Their intense relationship is shot through with dishonesty and danger, and as Yee is drawn deeper into Wong's trap, and Wong sacrifices yet more of herself and her feelings, deceit mingles with a unique kind of honesty - and where it leads Wong is both astonishing and d disturbing.
It's obvious by now that I liked and admired this film immensely. I've mentioned the performances already: Tang Wei is bound to be praised, and I don't argue with that for a moment, but I'm singling Tony Leung out because I think just as much depends on his portrayal of Yee - what happens to Wong can only make any kind of sense if we can see Yee from more than one angle. And we do. Alexandre Desplat's music is gorgeous, the look of the film is carefully composed, and it's through background sounds and sights that Ang Lee draws our attention to the presence and influence of westerners in the China of the 1940s: it's a bit of shock to see so many white Europeans on the streets. Who were these people? we're bound to ask ourselves. And both Elgar and tango music play key dramatic roles at turning points in the story.
Ultimately what makes this film, though, is the treacherous affair at its heart. Lust, Caution often reminded me of Hitchcock - there's a reference to his Suspicion when Wong first visits the cinema - and especially the false, true and deadly relationship between Scotty and Madeleine in Vertigo. Like them, Yee and Wong make truth lie, as they move beyond the parts they play, and are changed.
See Lust, Caution - it's great. I'm following Ang Lee closely from now on. Brokeback Mountain was good, and Sense and Sensibility really good - but Lust, Caution is even better.
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