What a waste of my time!!!

Really Surprised!

Fantastic!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It contains various kinkds of elements movies: sexuality, esthetics, suspense,etc. Really astonisthed at how they combine with each other and constitute a huge intricate artwork. Hope for your next Mandarian movie, Ang Lee. You are such a sentimental and meticulous director.

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.

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.

With excellent cinematography, impeccable direction, a haunting score and top-notch performances, why is 'Lust, Caution', such a ho-hum affair? For starters, so much of it is stretched out that we end up with only tidbits of compelling drama. This film could have and would have worked a lot better had about 45 minutes of celluloid found its way on to the cutting room floor.'Lust, Caution' is divided into two parts. The first part is set in Hong Kong in 1938, before the Japanese have occupied all of China. Leehom Wang does well in his first acting performance as Kuang Yu Min, a radical student at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. He conscripts a pretty, shy co-ed, Wong Chia Chi, to act in a patriotic play, designed to inflame the passions of a Chinese audience, who naively believe that they can defeat the Japanese, who are on the verge of taking over the entire country. Chia Chi is so successful in moving the audience to tears that Kuang becomes convinced that she could assist him and his acting group turned real-life conspirators, in a plot to assassinate Mr. Yee, a local party chief affiliated with the Wang Jingwei puppet government in mainland China. Kuang concludes that only Chia Chi can infiltrate Yee's organization and perhaps help facilitate his assassination.Chia Chi assumes the identity of Mrs. Mak, the wife of an import-export dealer and is introduced to Mrs. Yee, the wife of the intended target. While we're expecting some kind of exciting, assassination attempt by Kuang and his confederates in the first hour of the film, that never materializes as Mr. and Mrs. Yee unexpectedly move back to Shanghai. What we are treated to during the first hour is a long-winded sequence of "Mrs. Mak" playing Mahjong with Mrs. Yee and her social circle, Chia Chi being deflowered by one of Kuang's co-conspirators in order to gain some skill in seducing Mr. Yee and the clumsy murder of Tsao, one of Yee's subordinates, who pays a visit to the Kuang and company as they are packing up their bags following Yee's sudden departure from Hong Kong.While the conspirators are supposed to be the 'good guys', Ang Lee makes the point that they're really no better than Mr. Yee, who both use Chia Chi as a sex object. When she's forced to lose her virginity in such a mechanical way, Kuang wants her to understand that this is her service to a greater cause—at the same time, he does nothing to comfort her and worse, express any deep-felt feelings he has for her. All this only serves to harden Wong who later betrays the group. The betrayal at the film's climax is foreshadowed by the group's awkward attempt to train Wong as a seductress—this is where she really loses her enthusiasm for the group's cause.The second part of of 'Lust, Caution, takes place four years later in Shanghai. Kuang now is an undercover agent for the KMT, which seeks to undermine Japanese occupation rule and the Chinese puppet government. With her past contacts with Mr. Yee and his wife, Chia Chi again is able to infiltrate the Yee inner circle. This time she becomes Yee's mistress and most of the film deals with Yee and Chia Chi's relationship. Yee is first depicted as a sadist as he rapes Chia Chi during their first sexual encounter. Gradually he warms up to her and by film's end, he's buys her a very expensive diamond ring. By concentrating on the sexual relations between the two, Ang Lee sacrifices any chance to develop Yee's character. He's played by Tony Leung Chiu-Wai who desperately tries to humanize Yee by showing his tender side during love-making (although he's afraid of the dark, Yee eventually allows Chia Chi to place a towel over his eyes, connoting some vulnerability). But we surely would have liked to know more about Yee—for example, what does he exactly do in his job as head of the secret police? (I think that's a lot more interesting than all those sex scenes that go on ad infinitum). Why not more like the scene in the Japanese district where Yee confides to Chia Chi that he really despises the Japanese and their cause is lost? Now that's ambiguity (and we needed a lot more of that!).As for Chia Chi, her failure to help the good guys, is meant to be seen as tragic. While Mr. Yee plays with her emotions, she begs the KMT to act before she becomes an emotional basket case. Due to 'strategic concerns', Chia Chi is told to wait and before you know it, she's fallen for 'bad boy' Yee, hook, line and sinker. Lee seemingly sees her as a victim of a male chauvinistic society. Others might view her as a weak woman who had a job to do during wartime and betrayed her confederates, resulting in their tragic death.Chia Chi warns Mr. Yee at the film's denouement and he escapes with his life. I had no objection to Ang Lee trying to avoid a sentimental, happy ending. Given the time period the film is set in, there actually weren't too many happy endings for Chinese people under the Japanese occupation. Nonetheless, it sure takes us a long time to get there. But even if you're willing to go along with the film's glacial pacing, one is struck by the fact that this is not a film that appeals to the intellect. Rather, it's a film that relies merely on the sexual chemistry between the principals without bothering to virtually flesh out any other element of their personalities. The same can be said for the supporting players (the conspirators) who we find out next to nothing about.For all its wonderful atmosphere, 'Lust, Caution' serves up only a few surprises; along the way, its characters remain ciphers who we can hardly become involved with.