Lust, Caution Review

Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, his anticipated follow-up to Brokeback Mountain and winner of the Golden Lion in Venice, is many different things. It's an historical drama set in Japanese occupied Shanghai. It's almost three hours long (which is almost an hour too long). It's a showcase for fine performances by Tony Leung, Joan Chen, and newcomer Wei Tang.

But mostly, it's rated NC-17.

And it's a shame that it's largely defined by that, but in this country at least it's impossible for it not to be. The stigma of the "adult film" is killing it at the box office and it's the first thing mentioned about it, despite Leung and Tang's love-scenes comprising perhaps ten minutes of a hundred and sixty minute feature.

So, before I saw it, I was mostly wondering was it worth it? Are these graphic sex scenes so artistically important that it justifies the prudish MPAA's seal of doom?

The verdict? No, not really. And they certainly don't help the appeal of a film that's already plodding and sleepy.

Tang plays a young actress who embarks on a mission, first with some idealistic schoolmates and the with the official Chinese resistance movement, to assassinate Leung's treasonous government official. He's so traditionally cautious of attack (like the title, get it?) that Tang must enter into an affair with him to get him to let his guard down.

Their acrobatic lovemaking is supposed to represent both characters finding human connection in the only way they can- him after inhumanly torturing resistance members all day, and her after being treated like a pawn by both her friends and her government. But it's mostly just abusive, awkward, and out of place in a movie that is so drearily refined otherwise.

The graphicness of the scenes themselves isn't terrible, but Lust, Caution earns the rating by having them carry on way too long. And whether I agree with the NC-17 label or not (I don't), this is symptomatic of the movie as a whole: it's padded out with an unnecessary framing device, about half an hour of mahjong games, and all builds to a hasty and unsatisfying conclusion.

So in the end, the bally-hooed sex scenes are the only thing worth remarking upon in an overstuffed film. The credits of Lust, Caution informed me that it was based on a short story. I never would've guessed.

When to See It: On DVD