Lust, Caution

Lust, Caution, a 2007 film in Chinese directed by Ang Lee, somehow manages to have explicit sex scenes and still be boring. It's over two and a half hours long, but based on a short story. How can you make a movie that takes longer to watch than to read the source material?

I will acknowledge that Lust, Caution is gorgeous to look at. It was shot by Rodrigo Prieto, and the sets and costumes are lovely. It is set during the war years in China, during the Japanese occupation, but Western clothes had already took hold there, so the men are in suits and fedoras and the women are in dresses that maintain the Chinese culture, but are reminiscent of those worn in film noir.

The film is about a woman, Tang Wei, who goes deep undercover to assassinate the Chinese leader of the secret police. She starts as a shy, mousy girl, but joins a theater group at her university in Hong Kong. They are radical Chinese patriots, and concoct a plan to get to Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), the smoldering collaborator. Of course, once she seduces him things get complicated.

I had the luxury of seeing this film on DVD, and could stop it and do things and go back to it. I think if I had had to endure it straight through in a cinema I would have liked it less. Lee, coming off his Oscar for Brokeback Mountain, is very self-indulgent here, as the film needs a good half an hour of trimming.

The sex scenes are remarkably explicit, the kind that make you wonder if they were really doing it, as it doesn't seem body doubles are involved. Lee refused to cut it down to an R, but the scenes are gratuitous.

Tang is a great beauty, but I haven't seen any of her other films. China banned her from working for a while because of the sex scenes in Lust, Caution. Leung, one of the great stars of international film, usually plays a good guy, but he's quite good here as a villain, although, as most villains do, he never raises his voice--he just emanates his power.

The ending of Lust, Caution was very disappointing, although I sensed it coming. It doesn't say much for women.