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Crouching desires

Ang Lee's latest adds to the director's fame
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
January 23rd, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
In the mood for a troubled love. Tang Wei and Tony Leung: Lust, Caution.
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Lust, Caution

Directed by Ang Lee
With Tony Leung, Tang Wei, Lee-Hom Wang and Joan Chen
Playing with English subtitles at Slovanský dům

Is there a more empathetic director than Ang Lee? Though a quick glance at his films makes Lee seem daringly versatile (Sense and Sensibility, The Hulk, Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), his work shares one common trait: a humane understanding for the human condition that rejects simplistic labels such as “good” and “evil.”
Ang’s latest film, Lust, Caution, presents this innate humaneness in a tough tale of espionage, assassination and truly violent passion, set against a backdrop of Japanese-occupied China during World War II. The ostensible villain, a Chinese official who becomes a collaborator with the Japanese invaders, is shown as a scarred, loveless man who has a childlike fear of the dark. The heroes are earnest Chinese nationalists, whose schemes and bravado within the resistance falter to trembling when faced with real action.
Lust, Caution is based on a story by the renowned Chinese-American writer Eileen Chang, whose work was often set in the Shanghai and Hong Kong of the Pacific war years. Her novels and stories — considered by many literary critics to be the finest produced in Chinese mid-century — are also known for their frank assessments of love between men and women.
In Lust, Caution, a young student, Wang (Tang Wei), finds herself becoming involved with her university’s theater club, headed by the dashing actor/director Kuang (Lee-Hom Wang). The group’s patriotic melodramas stir their audiences’ resistance against Japanese imperialism, though the triumphant Japanese are soon overrunning Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Finding themselves at war, the drama students decide to lend their acting talents to the Chinese underground. They hope to entrap a notable collaborator, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), whom they plan to assassinate, by disguising themselves as wealthy sympathizers of the invasion.
Wang soon becomes the plot’s bait, after the cool, officious Mr. Yee begins paying attention to her when she attends the daily mahjong games that his wife (Twin Peaks’ Joan Chen) holds in their house.
Wang withstands much in her group’s plan. While she’s impersonating a married woman, in reality she’s a virgin, and the group decides that she must be “broken in.” If this weren’t humiliating enough, she then finds their plotting ruined by events (which include a distressing practice murder), and flees the now-bloody drama circle for an aunt’s house to reinvent her life.
As the Japanese invasion progresses, Wang again falls into the company of resistance fighters, and the original plan for Mr. Yee is dusted off. This time, however, the plan begins to succeed all too well. Yet as Wang becomes more involved with Yee, she begins to love him, which will take her to a point of wanting to destroy herself as much as him.
What roughly sounds as melodramatic as any of the students’ stage pageants becomes a taut, erotic thriller in Lee’s hands. The characters’ psychologies are complex. Indeed, it’s a shock to discover Wang falling for a man who’s lovemaking technique is, at first, indistinguishable from a rapist’s attack. But the damaged Yee’s underlying vulnerability (rawly expressed by Leung) is difficult for Wang to dismiss.
Lust, Caution has garnered much press for its sex scenes, which are full-on and brutal. Still, it’s the nakedness of the emotions conjured in this film that leave the most lasting impressions.
Not surprisingly, the sympathetic Lee is a consummate actors’ director, and he coaxes marvelous performances from both veterans like Leung and Chen, as well as newcomers Wei and singer Lee-Hom Wang. Wei in particular gives a startling multilayered performance, effortlessly moving from naive schoolgirl to world-weary underground agent.
The film’s colors are purposefully muted and gray to match the characters’ internal, moral terrain. Lee also does an excellent job of making us aware of the unfolding tragedy around Shanghai’s population of Westerners (tertiary souls in this drama), without resorting to sidetracks from the storyline.
Perhaps the greatest example of Lee’s humane storytelling comes, strangely, with the vicious killing of a man who stumbles upon the drama group’s plans.
As with the murder-by-asphyxiation in Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, it’s seldom that one sees the sheer, horrific labor behind the taking of another’s life in film. Here, it becomes a terribly sad grappling with death, not so far removed from some aspects of love.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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