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Lust, Caution (2007)
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Reviews Counted:139
Fresh:98
Rotten:41
Average Rating:6.6/10
Consensus: Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is a tense, sensual and beautifully-shot espionage film.
Australian Rating: R18+ [See Full Rating] High level sex scenes, Some violence
Runtime: 2 hrs 39 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Australian Theatrical Release:
Jan 17, 2008 Wide
US Box Office: $4,436,160
Synopsis: The new film from Ang Lee, the Academy Award-winning director of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." A startling erotic espionage thriller about the fate of an ordinary... The new film from Ang Lee, the Academy Award-winning director of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." A startling erotic espionage thriller about the fate of an ordinary woman's heart, it is based on the short story by revered Chinese author Eileen Chang, and stars Asian cinema icon Tony Leung opposite screen newcomer Tang Wei. Shanghai, 1942. The World War II Japanese occupation of this Chinese city continues in force. Mrs. Mak, a woman of sophistication and means, walks into a café, places a call, and then sits and waits. She remembers…how her story began several years earlier, in 1938 China. She is not in fact Mrs. Mak, but shy Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei). With WWII underway, Wong has been left behind by her father, who has escaped to England. As a freshman at university, she meets fellow student Kuang Yu Min (Wang Leehom) Kuang has started a drama society to shore up patriotism. As the theater troupe's new leading lady, Wong realizes that she has found her calling, able to move and inspire audiences – and Kuang. He convenes a core group of students to carry out a radical and ambitious plan to assassinate a top Japanese collaborator, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung). Each student has a part to play; Wong will be Mrs. Mak, who will gain Yee's trust by befriending his wife (Joan Chen) and then draw the man into an affair. Wong transforms herself utterly inside and out, and the scenario proceeds as scripted – until an unexpectedly fatal twist spurs her to flee. Shanghai, 1941. With no end in sight for the occupation, Wong – having emigrated from Hong Kong – goes through the motions of her existence. Much to her surprise, Kuang re-enters her life. Now part of the organized resistance, he enlists her to again become Mrs. Mak in a revival of the plot to kill Yee, who as head of the collaborationist secret service has become even more a key part of the puppet government. As Wong reprises her earlier role, and is drawn ever closer to her dangerous prey, she finds her very identity being pushed to the limit... --© Focus Features [More]
Starring: Tony Leung, Tang Wei, Joan Chen, Wang Lee-Hom
Starring: Tony Leung, Tang Wei, Joan Chen, Wang Lee-Hom
Director: Ang Lee
Director: Ang Lee
Screenwriter: Hui Ling Wang, James Schamus
Producer: Bill Kong, Ang Lee, James Schamus
Composer: Alexandre Desplat
Studio: Focus Features
Reviews for Lust, Caution
Like the many facets of a diamond, the human heart can find its lustre in dark places. Ang Lee's tortuous film about love and betrayal takes passion through highs and lows as it leads us through its tense and riveting journey
Though his direction is unsurprisingly beautiful, the settings lush and the performances wonderful, no one apparently had the guts to insist Lee streamline his rambling story.
La mano experta de Ang Lee logra sostener el relato durante sus dos horas y media de duración, con algunos picos de intensidad en un par de escenas brillantemente resueltas.
For all Lee's meticulous control over this immaculately nuanced melodrama-thriller, there is a surprising lack of emotional draw.
What lingers is the suspicion that women carry a burden of war they can't ever put down, and that even noble idealists can justify turning their girls into whores.
Lee provides no such easy comfort, instead keeping audiences constantly off-kilter, purposefully frustrating them with character behavior that's just...wrong.
There's no doubt while watching Ang Lee's Lust, Caution that you're in the hands of a supreme filmmaker.
Lust - the word that speaks of inflamed passions, repressed longing and seriously naughty sex stands ill at ease with this rather languid exploration of freedom fighting during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in the early 1940s.
You leave the theatre a trifle exhausted but rewarded by a resonance few films possess.
Saucy sex scenes apart, however, it’s hard to get drawn into a slow-moving, drawn-out story that takes two-and-a-half po-faced hours to reach its jarringly abrupt and confusing conclusion.
A pleasure to watch a film as visually stylish as it is psychologically demanding. I wish it had been twice as long.
For his sheer muscular verve and ambition, Lee deserves a standing ovation.
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September 26, 2008:
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February 18, 2008:
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