Raven-1969 Love is true only if it lasts through hard times. For Chia-chi, an intelligent and beautiful loner in China of the late 1930s, such a test takes many forms. She experiences a crush for a fellow student, Yumin, who encourages her to join a group of actors and renegades speaking out against the Japanese invaders of the mainland. Acting comes naturally for Chia-chi. So naturally and honestly in fact that reality and imagination become intermingled and a blur in her mind. When Yumin shifts the focus of the group from acting to an assassination plot, Chia-chi joins in, if only to be closer to her crush. Their target is a fearsomely effective and high-ranking agent and Japanese collaborator, Mr. Yee. Chia-chi is chosen to befriend Yee and lure him from his safe zone where he can be shot. Chia-chi is so immersed in different roles and emotions that she does not know who or what to trust. Yee, in his openness and honesty, tugs at Chia-chi's heart despite his brutality. She wavers between passion and fear, lust and caution. "If you pay attention," says a character in the film "nothing is trivial." The same is true of the film; there are so many wonderful layers. This multi-dimensional world of impossible, hopeless and doomed love, is where director Ang Lee – one of my favorites - is at his best. Little things such as holding hands, fleeting glances, little marks of favoritism or love, carry immense significance. Emotions are raw and heartfelt. They hit you like an electric current. Eyes are piercing, cicadas hum in the background, the actors are beautiful and conversations are fascinating. There is the art and gossip of mahjong, the mysterious melodies of shou-shu, the lavish fashions of 1930s Shanghai and the music-box-like sweetness of Brahms. Scenes transition well from one to the other, and surprises - such as a sudden stabbing – often thrill and delight. Lee portrays inner emotions and conflicts so very well, in part through eliciting fantastic performances from the actors. The way Lee combines bliss and doom in one moment, as he does in a scene where someone is close to committing suicide and at the same time the happiest they've ever been, is pure mastery. You'll recognize the moment when you see it. The ending of the film is one scene, once glance, that will forever stay etched in my memory.Ten years ago, I waited in the "rush" line of last minute ticket hopefuls to see one of the premiere showings of this film at the Toronto International Film Festival. The line dwindled to just two people in front of me when the administrators announced they had only one ticket left. I was crushed. I was so close to getting admitted and had waited so long, yet I had failed. Each of the two in front of me, however, refused to go in without the other, so that last ticket was mine! This was the beginning of my love affair with the Toronto International Film Festival. I attended the festival every year since this moment.The film is rated NC-17 for its sex scenes which are wrongly judged to be too long and explicit by some. The scenes are, rather, fit antidote to the neutered, bland and fake sex scenes that are typically shown in films. The emotion and spark of Lust, Caution is what makes Lee such an amazing director. Some maintain that Lust, Caution is not one of Lee's best films, yet I crave his doomed love stories and believe this film is in the same league as Brokeback Mountain and - my favorite film of all time - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Some say the film is too long at two hours and forty minutes, yet I cannot see where the film might be cut and still maintain its wonderful power. The language of the film is mostly Mandarin. It is set in Hong Kong and Japanese occupied Shanghai circa 1938 – 1942. Seen at TIFF, 2007.

kluseba This Chinese movie is a visually stunning drama that convinces with two extremely talented main actors that incarnate two credible and fascinating characters. On one side, you have the charming, naive and shy student Wong Chia Chi who gets coincidentally involved into the resistance movement against Japanese occupation and the Chinese puppet government in Hong Kong back in 1938. She gets introduced to the social circle of Mister Yee's wife in order to approach, then seduce and ultimately trap him. The special agent and recruiter of the puppet government is brutal towards his enemies, emotionally cold and very experienced.Wong Chia Chi becomes Misses Mai and is able to seduce her target but when the resistance movement is ready to get the enemy killed, he moves to Shanghai with his family. The group's plans get discovered and result in a twisted crime after which the organization falls apart and disappears. Four years later, Wong Chia Chi also moves to Shanghai for studies and lives a solitary live in depression and poverty, abandoned by her father and her friends. She meets one of her old partners again who introduces her to an egoistic, pitiless and vengeful undercover agent of the Kuomintang who wants to finish what had begun four years ago. Wong Chia Chi takes the identity of Misses Mai again and soon meets her target on a regular basis. They start to have a relationship that is quite brutal, cold and physical in the beginning but the two solitary souls soon start to develop true emotions towards each other. As the resistance starts to concretely organize the assassination of the target, the matured young woman has to decide which path to choose.The story of this movie is intriguing thanks to a very strong acting and a progressive character development. The film features brutal and cold sex scenes close to a rape but these scenes ultimately get more and more aesthetic and passionate. This radical contrast perfectly portrays both characters and the essence of the movie. In many movies, sex scenes are not very well acted and remain superficial but these ones really make sense, incarnate a certain spirit and feel extremely real as if the two actors were truly in a relationship which is though not the case.The movie is quite slow paced in the beginning and takes some time to kick off which might be difficult for some people but at the same time, this flick gives us a credible portrait of the difficult life during the Second Sino-Japanese War. As it's often the case for contemporary Chinese movies, a lot of budget went into the beautiful costumes, the authentic decorations and the detailed locations. All these elements drown the viewer into a very credible past world and develop a great atmosphere.In the end, any fan of contemporary Chinese movies should check this solid production out. Be sure to view the almost flawless uncensored version that is much more authentic, complex and dynamic than the shortened one.

Danusha_Goska Save Send Delete "Lust Caution" is a big, fat melodrama with two small, lifeless gimmicks where its heart and mind should be. It's the story of a young, beautiful Chinese spy who, implausibly, must seduce a Japanese collaborator in order to set him up for assassination. The question that is meant to keep you watching through endless, empty, boring, setup: Will the would-be assassin fall in love with her quarry, a man she is forced to bed? "Lust Caution" has the production values of a superior melodrama: stitch-perfect vintage costumery: Chinese qi pao, Japanese geisha, and Western power suits and boxy shoulders; big, fat, vintage automobiles, shiny with chrome; and recreated cities of Japanese-occupied 1940s China. This film will satisfy viewers whose only demand of a movie be that it be luscious to look at.The problem is the ersatz gift underneath all those ribbons and inside all that crepe wrapping paper. The movie has no heart, and it has no head. The first hour and a half are unbearably boring and empty. I watched the mahjong scenes a couple of times to make sure I wasn't missing anything. They establish the superficiality of the Chinese collaborators' wives. That could have been accomplished much more quickly. The point of the scenes: look at this Chinese woman's perfect manicure, look at this big, fat ring, look at this silk qi pao. There's nothing there to engage anything other than the eyes.The film's two gimmicks: will the would-be assassin fall in love with her quarry, an utterly despicable man who, the film makes clear, tortures and murders Chinese freedom fighters during his long days at work, "at the office." The second gimmick: graphic sex scenes. In online reviews, some of the film's viewers assume that the act is not simulated, but genuine.Japan, of course, committed wartime atrocities every bit as horrific as those committed by the Nazis. They just committed their crimes farther away from Western news cameras. I won't detail here the nightmares the Japanese created in cities like Nanking; Iris Chang, among others, uncovered these hidden atrocities."Lust Caution" has chosen a monster for its lead. In bed, though, this torturer is one of the world's great lovers. His masterful feats of lovemaking are so acrobatic you'll not be sure if you're viewing a page from the Kama Sutra or a metaphor invoking ramen noodles.I'd really like to sit director Ang Lee down and ask him a question. Why did you cast actor Tony Leung, handsome, tender, and charismatic, as a torturer? Do you really think real life torturers looked anything like Tony Leung? Leung cannot hide the facial expressions of a human, decent, lovable guy. He is not the best choice to depict a man hardened by years of the kind of tortures that the Japanese performed. Yes, being a professional torturer shows on the face. Look at the faces of professional torturers. They don't look like tender lovers. They don't look like Tony Leung.All of this nonsense could have at least been entertaining, but it's not. "Lust Caution" has a single-digit IQ, no soul, and a glacial pace. In addition to be grotesque, it commits the cardinal sin of a popular entertainment. It is almost too boring to sit through.

evileyereviews Ang Lee is no mouse when tackling seamy issues, and when he set out to create this sexual thriller, he tossed in the biggest kitchen sink ever. From the sex scenes to the production set, every single thing was done in a cyclopean magnitude. A racy little NC17 number, this one fully exposed the, er, many talents of Asia. The story itself was a simple one, allowing for an authentic time period ambiance. The lead actress, picked from a posse of around ten thousand hopefuls, had never been in a full production movie. Ang Lee spent 3 months training her for the role. It worked, and her lead role was phenomenal. Old hand Tony Leung's talents were used to create perfectly subdued character whose intensity shot out his eyes like elephants on a trampoline. As expected, the direction and camera work were sublime. The movie was rather long at 2 hours and 37 minutes, but not one scene was superfluous or gratuitous. In other words, this epic was worth every minute.Evil Eye Reviews