Movie Review - Lust, Caution

I went to this amazing movie tonight. Alone.

It was an incredible cinematic experience. Ang Lee has outdone himself. My only disappointment is that I feel most American audiences would not "get" the film. What available character development is subtle, and I don't think the average American does well with subtle. Perhaps it would be better to read the short story the film is based on first, although I think I would have enjoyed the movie, either way.

The movie definitely deserves its NC-17 rating, but I also feel that the movie is not a pornographic drama, even though the sex scenes are incredibly explicit. The focus of the story is on the female protagonist, Wang Chia Chi/Mai Tai Tai (Tang Wei) and her involvement in a resistance plot to assassinate Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), the head of Wang Ching-wei's intelligence service (the film is set in 1942 Shanghai).

I knew that, even if I did not like the film, it would at least be beautiful to watch. I was not disappointed. Ang Lee has said that he feels the movie could be best categorized as a film noir, but I think that is true in tone and subject matter alone. The photography has too much light in it to truly be a noir. Regardless, attention to every detail (including reflections in windows, lipstick on handkerchiefs and coffee cups) is incredible, and every shot is beautiful.

The big complaint from critics seems to be the lack of character development and pace. To this, I only have to point at the source material - it's very difficult to do extensive character development in a 60-page novella, especially in a fairly simple story with one or two major themes. To translate the story to the screen, Lee had to make additions to flesh out the plot and show interactions that take up less than a page in the book.

I really shouldn't say "additions", what he did was make faithful elaborations to something that was already there.

Also, the story is very internal - I think it's very difficult to convey thoughts when you don't have words to help you. A Western director (I feel) would have turned all of that into dialogue.

I feel like I don't understand much more Chinese in movies than when I started taking Chinese classes, and that's disappointing to me. However, I know enough that I can smile when something I do understand is translated slightly differently in the subtitles than how I would have done it. Or when I pick up a grammar structure that I've learned. This was actually very distracting to me - it would be nice to watch the movie again just to enjoy the acting, the music, the costumes (I really want to make that blue qipao Tang Wei tries on in the tailor's shop in Hong Kong), and the breathtaking cinematography.

I know that most theaters will not carry Lust, Caution, because of the NC-17 rating. Even with the many movie theaters I have access to (at least seven locally), there are only two that were showing the film tonight. It's also an artsy film, which tend to not get distributed as widely.