- Admittedly, I fell asleep in the first half hour or so of this movie but it was more because I was tired than because it was boring. I woke up when one character shouted in jubilation after winning a game of mahjong. I don’t think I really missed anything that was desperately pertinent in this bit, but I suppose it would have been nice to see it.
- Speaking of which, I imagine there’s some nice symbolism in the mahjong tiles we see the officers’ wives playing with throughout the movie, but given that I don’t know what any of the characters on the tiles are or what they represent, this symbolism goes right over my head. I’m sure it works better for people who actually play mahjong regularly.
- If you really enjoy movies with espionage and intrigue, you’ll enjoy this movie a lot. There are all these little twists and turns about who knows what, who is watching who, what you think you know vs. what you know vs. what other people know you know, etc. I also liked that how it didn’t skim over how long these things can take, where embedding yourself deep within the confidence of the person you’re trying to assassinate can take ages and ages.
- Wei Tang and Tony Leung where pretty fantastic at conveying the incredibly emotionally complex relationship between their characters. It was continuously evolving and shifting but it was never unbelievable.
- Yes, this is the movie that is rated NC-17 in the U.S.* My question is: how the hell do you film at those angles without the actors actually having sex? These are not artfully selective scenes where Ang Lee has chosen to take random shots of boobs or asses and arrange them to suggest sex, this is full-on, no-way-to-fake-it-through-editing sex and I swear there is no other way they could have done it except for making the actors actually have sex with each other. I wouldn’t be surprised, per se, given that there was an actual blow job in The Brown Bunny, actual intercourse in Shortbus, and that unsimulated sex acts are apparently becoming a new trend in legitimate, non-pornographic films because of the credibility it supposedly gives those actors who do it. I’m just sort of boggled that given what we do see on screen, there is any way that could be simulated.
* This was actually rated 18A in Ontario, which I find odd since our R rating is roughly equal to the NC-17 rating. (18A is roughly equal to the MPAA’s R rating.)
That said, there are basically only three sex scenes. The first one is actually a mostly fully-clothed rape scene that shows Mr. Yee getting off through violence (he’s got a belt and he’s not afraid to use it, let’s just say). It’s not explicit so much as pretty disturbing. The second one is probably the one that will shock audiences most because it’s pretty in your face and probably wouldn’t be out of place in soft core porn. The third and final scene feels common place by the time you get to it because it’s like “Ho hum, we saw this already, I’m no longer shocked.” Desensitization at work, my friends!
- If you go into this movie thinking it’s going to be sex, sex, sex all the time, you’re going to be incredibly disappointed. You’ll also miss out on how good the rest of the movie is, which would be a shame.
Lust, Caution
Contrary to popular belief, there are things in this film other than sex scenes.
IMDB Plot Synopsis An espionage thriller set in WWII-era Shanghai, in which a young woman, Wang Jiazhi, gets swept up in a dangerous game of emotional intrigue with a powerful political figure, Mr. Yee.