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dir: Ang Lee
I respect you for your mind
You could say that the subject matter of Lust, Caution was a strange choice for Ang Lee, if it really was possible to contend such a thing. But he’s never been consistent in his film choices or in their content, so it really isn’t that strange, is it?

I mean, look at this CV: The Ice Storm, Sense and Sensibility, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hulk and Brokeback Mountain.

If there is one consistency to point to, it's that these aren't superficial films. Clearly, he makes films about whatever he wants, and he is not bound by any genre or convention. For this he has loyal fans but an unpredictable output.

Lust, Caution looks at the blossoming, in more ways than one, of a young patriotic lass called Wong Jiazhi (Wei Tang), whose fateful job it is to infiltrate the affections and bed of a very bad man, being Mr Yee (Tony Leung Chiu Wai). The film begins when she is already in place, and then flashes back to four years in the past, to show how she got to this precarious place in her life.

It’s the 1930s. Japan has kindly invaded China and is gently raping and pillaging the country and the populace. To facilitate their benevolent leadership, the Japanese use people like Mr Yee as local enforcers with the illusion of bureaucratic respectability deriving from the puppet Kuomintang government. He runs a form of secret police, whose job it is to find and torture confessions out of suspected rebels and patriots, who, for some crazy reason, don’t relish being crushed beneath the boot of Japanese rule.

If this was the classic Jet Li anti-Japanese Occupation flick Fist of Legend, Jet Li would simply beat the absolute crap out of all the Japanese in order to get them to flee the country with their katana and wakizashi swords between their legs. Lust, Caution is, fortunately or unfortunately, more grounded in some kind of reality.

Jiazhi, who is initially the kind of poster child for Chinese female wholesomeness, is a student at university in 1939. She comes alive when she performs in a patriotic play riddled with anti-Japaneseness, all for the love (or probably schoolgirl crush) of one of the boys in the cast, who reveals himself to be a rebel. Filled with patriotic fervour, and a desire to win this guy’s affections, she undergoes some rudimentary training in order to be able to embrace the life of a spy.

It is this coming-alive through playing a role that becomes the central plank of the story. Well, that and the constant fucking, I guess. When Jiazhi first performs, she exhibits such passion and such an embracement of this other reality, that she makes it real for other people. Her role as a married Hong Kong merchant hiding out the deprivations of war in virtually untouched Shanghai is no less convincing for her, despite being a complete fabrication. The more she embraces it, the more she truly lives, and the more she convinces.

But it’s not real, and its sole purpose is to provide an opportunity for the rebels to kill Mr Yee. And what a cold piece of work Mr Yee is.

Tony Leung Chiu Wai would be familiar to anyone whose watched Hong Kong films in the last twenty years (my first glimpse being in the gun-fu masterpiece Hard Boiled), and more recently in the Infernal Affairs movies and the films of Wong Kar Wai. He is an actor of incredible presence, ability and charisma, and he is no less compelling in his role here.

Although, it has to be said that the most conspicuous absence here is his trademark charisma, because the character doesn’t warrant it. Yee is a cold, brutal man who has lost any semblance of humanity in his role as a torturer for the Japanese regime. He is paranoid, blunt and emotionless. He only eventually comes alive when he’s having brutal sex with Jiazhi.

And what a remarkable scene that is. Earlier on in the film, since her virginity is something of a hindrance if she’s meant to be a seductress, Jiazhi ‘trains’ herself by having sex with the only other member of the acting troupe alleged to have ever ‘got’ some. Those timid scenes set the groundwork for what comes later.

Frankness about the depiction of sex here (as opposed to alleged explicitness) is key, the way to tell the story rather than an obligatory timefiller or for titillation’s sake. That first nasty sex scene with Yee, is capped off by something unexpected at first: when Jiazhi lays down on a bed later and curls her finger to her lips, it’s to remember what just happened with a smile.

There are different ways to read that moment, but for me it’s more telling than almost anything else: she loves, at this stage, the role she’s playing. But the problem becomes, down the track, that the more sex she has with Yee, the less able she is to be comfortable with the idea of playing the crucial role in his assassination.

This isn’t the same thing as love. As a result, their sex scenes become angrier. In sex he loses himself and shows the tiniest amount of feeling towards another human being; in her it is an opportunity to vent her desires and also express her many frustrations. During one particularly spirited session, she seems to be wondering whether she can cut out all the espionage bullshit and just kill the fucker whilst she’s fucking him.

As it gets towards that time again, the killing time; will Jiazhi embrace her destiny and make Yee pay for the torment and misery he has visited upon her personally and her people, or will she find another path through the murky moral wastelands?

Wei Tang is amazing as the main character. Her transformation from idealistic schoolgirl to sophisticated operative is amazing, not least of all physically. She resembles, as well, and admires the Chinese heroines of the silver screen in her hair and clothing. She looks to the cinema for guidance as much as she looks to her spymaster handlers, but only the ending shows which set of mentors holds more sway.

As well made as the flick is, as well acted, visually splendid, carefully paced and immaculately put together, I can’t say that I loved the film. The spirited sex scenes are perversely cold even as they are passionate and explicit. Perhaps too explicit. As much as I love Tony Leung, I never really ever wanted to see his testicles. Now I have, and I can’t say that my life is any the better for it

Who knows, maybe there will be unforeseen benefits down the track.

It’s a complicated story with complicated characters, and it has an ending which is in keeping with both the history, the spirit of the times, the characters and the themes of the story. But that doesn’t make the ending any more satisfying. And the ending to such a story, the payoff, so to speak, is what matters. Especially since we spend most of the film wondering what that ending is going to be.

The film is littered with great individual scenes, probably the strongest of which is Jiazhi’s singing of a traditional song to Yee at the Japanese restaurant, where some of the miserable shell of his character is peeled back for a second to show that he’s still capable of mourning his lost humanity. But others will have to judge how well all those great scenes gel together, if at all. My powers of observation and description have abandoned me at the moment.

Approach both with lust and caution

7 ways in which love can be indistinguishable from hate out of 10

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“Do you still hate me?”
- “Yes.” – Lust, Caution.