Lust, caution (Ang Lee)

Starring Tony Leung, Tang Wei, Joan Chen, and Wang Lee Hom

Shanghai, 1942. Japan's World War II occupation of this Chinese city continues in force. Mrs. Mak, a woman of sophistication and means, walks into a café, places a phone call, and then sits and waits. She remembers how her story began several years earlier, in China in 1938. She is not in fact Mrs. Mak, but shy Wong Chia Chi. With WWII underway, Wong has been left behind by her father, who has escaped to England. As a freshman at university, she meets fellow student Kuang Yu Min. Kuang has started a drama society to shore up patriotism, As the theater troupe's new leading lady, Wong realizes that she has found her calling, able to move and inspire audiences--and Kuang. He convenes a core group of students to carry out a radical and ambitious plan to assassinate a top Japanese collaborator, Mr. Yee. Each student has a part to play; Wong will be Mrs. Mak, who will gain Yee's trust by befriending his wife and then draw the man into an affair. Wong transforms herself utterly inside and out, and the scenario proceeds as scripted--until an unexpectedly fatal twist spurs her to flee. (Focus Features)

"Lust, Caution" (shot by Rodrigo Prieto) at least has a suitably retro-dreamy look: This is a tasteful-looking picture, one that seems to have been buffed to a soft glow, like a piece of mellow vintage brass. And Lee couldn't have chosen more perfect actors for these roles. It's always a pleasure to watch Joan Chen. She doesn't have much to do here, but playing an aging, possessive beauty, she still manages to cast a quiet spell over the picture. Tang, with her fine features and always-questioning eyes, plays the seductress Wong with a deft balance of delicacy and toughness. She'd need to have both of those things in luxurious quantities to stand up to Leung. He is one of the finest actors in Asian cinema, and if nothing else, "Lust, Caution" may at least bring him a wider, more appreciative audience in the West.The love scenes in the last third of "Lust, Caution" are intense, affecting and beautifully filmed; they're also emotionally raw in a way that's surprising in a film that's otherwise so ponderous and inoffensive. One of the sex scenes essentially depicts a rape; later, the sex is consensual, and Lee shoots these scenes in a way that's unapologetically erotic, not just safe and "pretty." In these scenes, Mr. Yee and Wong play out a world of aggression in bed, perhaps directed not so much at each other as at the unruly, dangerous universe they're living in -- when they lash out and claw and bite, it's almost as if they're relieved to come into contact with real human skin, instead of just elusive, maddening air.
Wonderful movie, excellent sex scene , one of the best and most passionate. The actors are excellent also.