Lust, Caution / Se Jie

Yesterday evening I went to see Ang Lee's Lust, Caution / Se Jie.

It began with a Marlene Dietrich song playing in the background, and had a great deal of tango music throughout. The first song seemed to automatically link or somehow analogize between wartime Germany and wartime China. As a part of a revolutionary cell and involved with a political mass-murderer, the woman-- Ms. Mak, plays an interesting role, part Maria Braun, part Riefenstahl as a career in acting becomes much more. At first I wondered about the Redl overlaps, as it's an espionage story, also about Novembermond and a few others...

I found it quite impressive how Lee was able to incorporate some moments of humor which were unexpected, but which happened at just the right places-- when the terror cell kills the guy's guard during the first assassination attempt, and the guy just won't die, sort of like the assassination attempt in 1913 Serbo-Croatia. The other funny part was the ring, an enormous diamond surrounded by smaller diamonds, which looked like a wedding cake and a bit gaudy in the ring shop-- but only at the end of the film, did it look life-like and flower-like and had actually seemed to accrue some value-- the price for it was life; it would either be his life or hers.

I also found it interesting how courtly love stories were woven into it, the way the whorehouse is transformed into a courtly scene as she sings to him, and the tantric pillow book scenes. To me, the element of caution and reluctance at first actually seemed essential to some of these scenes being what they were, I couldn't imagine them without that. I found the analogy to wartime Germany at first a bit suspect at first and wondered if it was an attempt to manipulate emotions in mass-consciousness, but it was subtle enough that it added to the film, and then it goes in the opposite direction from the Maria Braun story as she begins as an opportunistic seductress and then begins to get things she really wants, no big explosions, though the end reminded me of the Goya painting of the revolutionaries getting shot. What I think might have been shown a bit better was the conflict between her growing affection for the guy and her alliegance to the revolutionary cell and its missions, we never really see her as a gung-ho rebel, but more of a reluctant one and a reluctant puppet of the group along the way; she clearly wasn't really getting anything she really wanted from the group, and I don't see what the incentive was, because she doesn't seem to have any strong political opinions and had to lose a number of times at mah johng to achieve the group's goals. Also, the political issues might have been shown in greater depth.

My first experience with Ang Lee was seeing Brokeback Mountain, and I think I still like that one better than Lust, Caution, but still want to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or whatever it's called.

I liked this review: http://european-films.net/content/view/838/118/

Here's the trailer: