"Lust Caution", dir Ang Lee, ***half

 "Lust Caution" , dir Ang Lee, ***half  2007

Just finished watching Lust Caution for the first time.  It has been most famous for the real love scenes.  Also the actress Tang Wei has been banned in China from making films for a few years after the movie came out, but not the actor nor the director.  Which is not fair at all.  

Maybe, in a conservative society, if they allow a woman to act out any kind of scenes as they dare in a movie, thats v dangerous for the whole of society.  A woman is supposed to have much more self restraint, many things they must not do, ie swear words in v crude language, challenging male sex come ons, having babies according to their own desire, having it or not having it, women has control over their own body and bodily desires.  So, why is Tang Wei the only one banned?  Because she dared to do all these things and if the board of censure passes this, what happens to the general everyday women, what if they no longer want to cook and clean and keep house all day for no paid for their man?  This 50% of slavery human power will be gone, and what to do? who is going to do all those work?  How are they going to keep the society running?  No no no.  Not allowed!  Too much freedom of will power and achieving dreams.

So onto the movie,  when it first came out (many years ago), I had watched it a few times for a few minutes at the beginning and did not continue.  But this time, after so many years, finally i got around to it because the film is based on a famous writer Aileen Changs short story which I have read a long time ago.  And I had just watched the "The Lover" also a movie based on a famous writers Marguerite Duras' autobiographical novel.  "The Lover" was a movie set in Vietnam about real physical love as a truly unforgetable binding act between two people who right from the start would not be able to carry the love to a destiny of plenitude - due to race and social ranks and ressources.  

The Lover was shot by  JJ Annaud, a non vietnamese, so his perspective is always a bit exotic.  Duras herself spoke perfect Vietnamese and passed high school diploma in Vietnamese, even though she is a white woman, she would have a true understanding of Vietnamese culture.  Asian culture.  But of course, her unique understanding of eroticism makes her novel a sort of a very unique voice, in-real-time flow of  breathing hot work.   Her writings all have this slow moving speaking from the guts ambiance. Whereas the Aileen Chang novel is cinematographic right from the start, from cool analytical angles with a lot of graphic details, arrangements of colors of the various settings in all her novels.  Aileen Chang is a very visual writer whereas Duras is a very musical writer.  Ang Lee is very careful about details in his movies, visually succint, very economical, he does not waste time on general broad strokes of unnecessary details.

  

Back to Love Caution,

The setting was in the Japanese occupation period of Shanghai, and Hong Kong.  Story is lines of intriques woven around a traitor and a group of University students who were patriotic and did underground work as spies.  As they were very young and inexperienced in life, and no match against the bona fide hard boiled traitors - the ending is tragic, the students all got arrested and executed.  In fact right at the beginning, the students were a kind of tool to an end, the side they worked for and the side they are fighting against did not hesitate to sacrifice the students.  The moment they decided to join the underground service they are more or less little lambs getting used and then chopped up sooner or later.  There were no consideration for them as human beings.

So, cut to the details, what i love about this movie is that all the scenes, the pacing, the setting are efficient, no dragging.  The scenes set in Hong Kong even though very few shots, expresses the ambiance so well, the colors, i could smell the air from looking at the screen.  Shanghai is also a bit exotic but well set.

The reason i did not watch much the first few times is that there has been so many movies set in the same period w the same Shanghai beauties, nostalgic fashions and it seems to be similar to a point of being trite.

However, the tension of whats said, and non spoken and the women playing mahjong are all perfectly tensioned.  Did the women know what Mr.Yi the traitor actually handles in his day to day life?  Did Mrs. Yi know or suspect of the love affair between her husband and this innocent pretty young thing?  All this is to be guessed by the viewers and not expressed.

And then, the love making scenes, tension, heat, violent rape like love making because it is only in extreme violence, mentally and physcially consuming the love object that the Mr.Yi could feel he is alive.  He is a person numbed by his everyday doings.

The scene in the Japanese restaurant where Tang Wei sings "Tian Ya Ge Nu" (Song of the sing song girl) is a bit too direct, not subtle for the character of Tang Wei.  If she has chosen another song, more lyrical musical and not so verbally speaking to the Mr.Yi character it would have been much better.  As is, its "drawing a doll with intestines showing" , too charicatural like a comic book figure.  Or maybe, I should say its a case of missing opportunites to transmit emotion via music, instead a point blank direct spoken lyrics has been used.  If she was presenting herself or that he wanted to perceive her as simple innocent woman - unlike a real geisha or prostitute whose job would be point blank to please - but here she is expressing her true desire for him, love for him, then she should be singing some other song, not this overtly mating match making confirmation couples song.  This is a popular folk song sung by pop sing song girls and not by say, people who has pretense/real education.

Good tight fast pace movie, but i am not convinced that violent real love making on screen actually does that much wonder for the film.  I feel that the actress has been sacrificed to make this movie.  The fact is, she hasn't had much film work that's interesting or important afterwards and she did do a very good job, and is very good.   Why why why?  

Did Lee Ang know that it would end up like this?  This point may not be part of the review of a normal movie making / analysis of the quality of the movie as a creation.  But somewhere along the line, sacrificing others to make this movie for "art" and the outcome is yes, v gd, but vis a vis the amount of efforts/sacrifice invested and the result, i would say, the output is not worth it, not enough - sacrificing other people for your own "artistic" ends, even if they agree to it, is not very pretty.  

In fact, the actress did not know that there were scenes like his.