in the mood for love with Lust, Caution - second viewing

from Day 4

Sunday, September 9, 2007

LUST, CAUTION
9:15 A.M.
SCOTIABANK 1

Movies are for people with time to kill

I don't like the dark

This is a rewrite based upon seeing Lust, Caution on Day 4 of TIFF07 and a second screening on Wednesday, October 3. Opening at the Varsity on Friday, October 5.
Sia Jye is set in occupied Shanghai 1942 and going back to their student days before the Chinese war with the Japanese and the resistance movement that arose - a group of idealistic university students plot to assassinate a powerful Chinese turncoat. With more time and the release of the movie at hand on Friday, this is a rewrite of the earlier musings from Day 4 at TIFF07


Ang Lee is no stranger to the Toronto International Film Festival going back to 1993 with The Wedding Banquet, then following up in 1994 Eat Man Drink Woman which was followed in 1999 with Ride With the Devil [ Tobey McGuire and Skeet Ulrich and Jewel in her first role onscreen ] and a little film back with which he won the best director Oscar in 2005 called Brokeback Mountain.

For us, Ang Lee first commandeered our attention at the Toronto International Film Festival 2001 with a little film called Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It was one of the hottest tickets of the festival, and we had to hit the ticket office three times in one day to finally secure a ticket. Back on that day, we caught the film's second screening at 9 a.m. at the late lamented Uptown 1 theatre. Even from up in the nosebleed seats, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was a true spectacle. The fighting and flying sequences unseen before most North American audiences at the time were breathtaking and dazzling, leading to much applause after many of the scenes came to their finish. Ang Lee was there that morning too, an unexpected event given the time of the morning, very friendly and went on to win the Academy Award afterwards too.

Lust, Caution [ which started off at 9:15 on a Sunday morning !] is an exquisitely beautiful film of intrigue, an audacious, drawn-out affair set in 1942 Occupied Shanghai, which then launches back four years earlier to the impending invasion by the Japanese in 1938 Shanghai and Hong Kong. The music of Lust, Caution is spellbinding - luring the audience into the world of storied espionage, and the singsong cadence of the Chinese language trips lightly on the ear in its many dialects, chiefly Mandarin and Shanghainese.

In Sia Jye, a group of idealistic university students plot to assassinate a powerful Chinese turncoat Mr. Yee played by the meancing Tony Leung [ perhaps best known in Happy Together, 2046 and In The Mood For Love ] who is co-operating and working with the Japanese occupation and the Chinese puppet government.

Lee recreates beautifully the era of the Japanese occupation in 1942 - a subterfuge lies beneath the mannered poise of the leading lady Tang Wei playing the role of Mak Tai Tai [Mrs. Mak], a well-dressed lady who speaks politely and with phrased English asks for "coffee, please' from the English waiter, then asks to use the phone and makes a call.

Time goes back to 1938 and the Chinese army is off to stop the impending Japanese invasion. Wong Chia Chi, a young teen, has been left behind with her mother in China by her father who has escaped to live in England with her brother. Her pleasures are for the movies, watching melodramatic American fare such as Ingrid Bergman in Intermezzo and crying in the dark, or Cary Grant in Penny Serenade. At the university in Hong Kong, Wong Chia Chi with her friend meets up with a idealistic visiting student Kuang Yu Min [ Wang Lee Hom ] who is forming a drama group. Kuang lost a brother to the war and his mother will not let him enlist, but he carries on in his spirit.
The obvious attraction between Wong and Kuang are manifested only through fleeting touches and glances. Instead of bourgeois plays such as Ibsen's A Doll's House the group will present patriotic play, one to stir the hearts of the audience against the Japanese. On opening night, Chia Chi's heartrending performance stirs the audience to repeated cries of "China will never fall!" Wang Chia Chi is now the star of the group who are now fast friends, celebrating by drinking and smoking cigarettes together.

Energized by the reaction from the audience and propelled by the play's success, Kuang proposes taking the drama society where away from just producing plays and setting on actually forming a resistance group. The students plan is to rent a summerhouse in Hong Kong and set up an elaborate ruse to kill a man Mr. Yee [ Tony Leung ] they know is collaborating with the Japanese. Bankrolled by the money from one of the group's father, they propose playing out the roles of an import/exporter and his wife along with a driver and servants from Hong Kong. Wang Chia Chi as Mak Tai Tai strikes up a friendship with the man's wife Mrs Yee [ Joan Chen ] with the aim of getting close to the well-protected Yee, and finding the moment for the group to strike. One night Wang Chia Chi succeeds in getting Yee to go out alone then take her home, but on the pivotal night, the ever cautious Yee refuses to come into the house. Subsequently Yee goes back to the mainland and the opportunity for the group is lost. But Tsao, one of Yee's security intrudes upon the aftermath of their plot and in a bloody struggle he is killed, but it clearly demonstrates the drama group are out of their league, and Chia Chi runs away.

Three years later, Wang Chia Chi is back in Hong Kong, back at university, her father not having the means to reunite her with him and her brother. Kwang who has been searching for her, meets up with her again - and introduces her to an even deeper version of the resistance. The new assignment is extremely dangerous, and the still idealistic Wang accepts her mission. The assignment requires an elaborate cover story requiring memorization of the minutiae of her life, and training in arms and fieldstripping a gun with her eyes blindfolded. Once again her target is Mr Yee.

Ang Lee guides this film with an assuredness and elegance, depicting with accuracy the wanton world of the shrewish sharp-tongued women who have little enough to do but to waste the time of day away upstairs with swiftly played games of mahjong and shopping, clothing. As Mak Tai Tai she is at her actress best - she is the polite and well-mannered friend of Yee's wife and her company, and under her role as wife of the importer/exporter, she is always willing to oblige and find scarce goods for them, including Palmers cigarettes, stockings and Western medicines. But she is notoriously bad at mahjong, constanly losing but as she says to Kuang later in a clandestine meeting, she has a lot on her mind while trying to concentrate on maintaining her guise.

She is once again in the grips of Mr Yee, who has risen in rank and become even more fearsome and powerful with an underground police at his command on the Japanese side of the city. He discovers she has returned from Hong Kong, and he is ensnared by her looks and her body.

2B

Their hearts are intertwined, never to be separated - the forbidden relationship between the two builds, reaching its first consummation in an isolated house in room 2B - as she teasingly begins by taking off her stockings under her blue dress, he cannot wait and roughly throws her against the wall and rips away at her clothing - throwing her to the bed and tying her hands behind her with his belt - the lovescene reflects the intensity, savagery and power at play.

Wang Chia Chi makes the supreme sacrifice of her body in order to help the cause. Yee is sadistic and rough; the love scenes between the couple are long and explicit - which have propelled this movie towards NC-17 territory. They provide the contrast to the last feelings of affection from Kuang for Wong Chia Chi. Too late Kuang who has always kept his feelings for her at a distancekisses her to which Wang replies, "You could have done this three years ago."

I hate you

Wang Chia Chi's personality is totally subjugated in the bedroom as she is engaged in intense love scenes with Yee [ that conjure the scenes of Jane March in L'amant ], further fuelling his feelings of lust/love for her and breaking down the wall of love and hate between them, demonstrable in his more than token of affection : a diamond ring, a six carat quail egg of incredible wealth and beauty. Even though she is waiting for that moment when the act will come to an end, the change in her at the thrust of his power causes her to question her self. Lust, Caution is a play of dominance and control, love and hate - who has the ultimate power? who is the master?

Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is a film for the artset who would hardly bat a prurient eye at the gripping lovescenes, but would be in the mood for a beautiful story of intrigue and wiles between two worthy foes.