Movie review: Lust, Caution

by John P. Meyer

The premise behind titling a film (or anything else) Lust, Caution (Se, Jie in Mandarin Chinese) would seem to be that these two modes of behavior are mutually exclusive - and such is certainly the case in director Ang Lee's new film, which itself throws caution to the wind and winds up richly deserving of the NC-17 rating slapped on it by the ever-cautious MPAA. Mr. Lee deserves accolades for refusing to compromise and sticking to his creative guns, while - it should be said - the ratings board made the right decision here, because this, my friends, is shockingly powerful film fare. If I were comparing Lust, Caution to cigars (and I appear to be doing just that) I'd refer to it as a "super fuerte."

Familiar Asian screen star Tony Leung (credited here as Tony Leung Chiu Wai) plays Mr. Yee, a collaborator working with occupying Japanese military forces (circa mid-1930's) to keep the population of Shanghai subservient to their invaders. Naturally, Yee is hated by patriotic Chinese and the resistance movement is anxious to scour his human stain from the planet's tiles. This will prove challenging, however, because Yee lives in a guarded compound and employs an intelligence network adept at ferreting out spies and would-be assassins. Yee himself seems to have a third eye in the back of his head when it comes to self-preservation and boasts about his interrogation skills; after witnessing his bedside manner, we have no trouble believing him.

Enter a collegiate acting troupe in the roles of their lives. Kuang Yu Min (Lee-Hom Wang) is a charismatic student agitator with a flair for theater who soon draws into his orbit the impressionable talents of - among others - Wang Jiazhi (Wei Tang), a young lady whose nascent acting ability he is quick to exploit. While Jiazhi has never previously appeared before an audience, her enthralling inaugural performance (in - naturally - a nationalist drama, accompanied by the stirring strains of Elgar's Nimrod) convinces everyone in the troupe of her ability to take on a grander assignment: that of Mata Hari to the traitorous Mr. Yee.

Thus begins a multi-year on-again off-again series of attempts by first the actors dabbling in espionage and later the professional resistance forces of Chinese nationalists to place Wang Jiazhi on such intimate terms with Yee that the latter will open himself up to an assault.

In addition to natural acting ability, Jiazhi's got this much going for her: she's a charming and beautiful young woman, and the obsessional attraction between herself and Mr. Yee ends up being entirely genuine.

As cover, Jiazhi adopts the role of the wife of import/export businessman Mr. Mak (Johnson Yuen); in the parlance of the place and age, she becomes Mak Tai Tai, equivalent in western terms to "Mrs. Mak." Mak Tai Tai is soon accepted as the genuine article by the community of collaborator wives, including Yee Tai Tai (Joan Chen). Since Mr. Mak is (wink, wink) so often out of the country on business, Mak Tai Tai must while away her days socializing with peers, which - in the case of her compound-bound and carefree acquaintances - means that she plays lots and lots of mahjong.

The tile-clicking klatch of collaborator wives becomes a sort of metaphor for the Shanghai population at large, which - judging by the sequences seen here - goes about business as usual while the brutality visited upon random Chinese citizens by their Japanese occupiers becomes so routine that it goes practically unnoticed. The comparison can be taken yet further, with mahjong - or any game - symbolizing the randomized chance of existence: the social stratum into which we are born; the quality of our lives; and whether - at the turn of a tile or the stroke of an administrator's pen - we find ourselves kneeling on the quarry's edge with a few lonely moments remaining to contemplate how things might have turned out differently.

It's also around the mahjong table that the flirtation between Mak Tai Tai and Mr. Yee reaches full fruition; with Mr. Yee sitting in for an absent matron, he and Jiazhi trade knowing glances and she finds an opportunity to slip him a scrap of paper inscribed with her phone number. It's hard to imagine Mrs. Yee missing - or misinterpreting - all this ocular foreplay, so perhaps she does not and simply chooses to ignore it. In any case, Yee and Jiazhi soon find themselves immersed in the most obsessive of affairs imaginable.

Prior to her insinuation into the role of Mak Tai Tai, Jiazhi and one of her actor friends engage in an undress rehearsal to provide her with carnal instruction - she being totally unschooled in the ways of lovers. Surprisingly, it is not Kuang Yu Min from whom she receives her training (he and she having engaged in a certain amount of smoldering eye-contact chemistry to this point) but one of the other male troupe members who happens to have the most experience in this area, given his proclivity for visiting prostitutes. After a certain amount of workmanlike preliminary - and as Jiazhi warms to her studies - he declares, "I think you're getting the hang of it."

If there's any question as to whether - given specific behaviors - sexual congress between consenting individuals can be characterized as rape, the first encounter between Yee and Jiazhi will settle the matter; she begins to slowly undress while he sits brooding in a chair across the room and then - without warning - abandons patience and hurls her against a wall before slamming her face down on the bed and taking her forcefully. While in future encounters he will display considerably more tenderness, it appears that Yee must first establish unequivocal dominance over his lover.

This sequence, like the film's other sex scenes (which are numerous), is precisely as graphic as it can be without indulging in displays of genitalia. I had read that the censors applied their dreaded NC-17 stamp because the number of consecutive strokes depicted exceeded some unpublicized upper limit, but regardless of whether this is the case - and given the extremity of passion on display - I have never witnessed more convincing copulations. Even first-hand. (RIMSHOT!)

The sly smile that insinuates itself onto Jiazhi's face as she lies prone on the bed following her assault must have pegged the censors' discomfiture level; the clear implication is that she's secure in the knowledge that - ironically - she has Yee just where she wants him, but those with a misogynist bent (or those who fear being labeled as having one) could take it that Jiazhi on some level enjoys her brutalization.

Speaking of strokes... it's not only sex which is unblushingly depicted, but violence as well. There's a prolonged stabbing that occurs in the movie's early sequences that will make most viewers beg for its ending; the number of plunges of the knife required to dispatch the victim is unexpectedly large, and the detailed mechanics of the operation (including the attackers' difficulties getting their blade beyond ribs to reach vital organs) are gruesome in the extreme.

Placing too much emphasis on the film's graphic depictions of sex and violence would be doing it a major disservice, because there are so many other highlights to discuss - beginning with the acting. Mr. Leung has always commanded the screen (see Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love), but with this multi-layered performance he should attain the status of icon. Outwardly charming and civil, with his guard lowered Yee demonstrates what can happen when emotion and angst and self-loathing suddenly find an outlet.

In similar fashion to her character's acting history, Wei Tang stars here in her first big screen role and overpowers the audience (that specific audience being me) with her sincerity and depth of expression. What comes through unequivocally is Jiazhi's commitment to the desperate task she has undertaken, and - towards the end of things - her coming to terms with the ultimate futility of her individual actions in the face of political and social machinations beyond her control. She is that most pitiful of sentient entities: a pawn who attains self-knowledge.

The world of the film is lush and immersive; we never doubt that we are at large in Shanghai circa World War II, with rickshaws sharing the roadways with Detroit-made sedans that look solid enough to bash their way through brick walls. A romantic and evocative score by Alexandre Desplat will have you wondering whether John Barry had a compositional hand in things - and I mean that as a major compliment.

Surprisingly, the scene I keep going back to after viewing the movie is an incidental one in which Jiazhi meets with her nationalist underground cell leader to describe for him her progress with Mr. Yee. When she begins relating in graphic detail the specifics of their intimacies, the tough spymaster can't handle it and yells at her to stop. Much in the manner of prudish western censors, he's at ease when discussing assassination but uncomfortable in the extreme when the subject turns to passionate embrace.

THE DOWNSIDE OF CINEMA?: "I don't like the dark." - Yee, explaining to Mak Tai Tai why he doesn't go to the movies.

HANDS-ON APPROACH: "I had to interrogate them personally - one by one." - Yee to Mak Tai Tai, regarding some captured nationalist spies.

PRETEND IT'S NOTHING: "Go downstairs - keep playing." - Yee to his wife, in regard to the sudden absence of Mak Tai Tai's belongings from the bedroom in which she's been staying.