Lust, Caution
Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution” is two-and-a-half hours of tedium punctuated by five minutes of the Kama Sutra. It’s supposed to take place in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, but it actually exists in a stilted, angst-ridden universe of Lee’s own imagining. The ingredients are there for a great yarn: sex and espionage, forbidden love and betrayal, amid a backdrop of war and political treachery. Yet Lee doesn’t mine the abundant raw material for drama, humor or suspense. Instead, he behaves as if the rules of coherent and well-paced storytelling don’t apply to him. Talk about delayed gratification: “Lust, Caution” takes forever to consummate the relationship between the principals, a high-ranking Japanese collaborator and a young actress assigned by the Chinese resistance to seduce him. Lee uses sex to chart the evolution of their relationship, which begins with rape and progresses to tender, if still adventurous, carnal embrace. The actors are certainly game: The great romantic leading man Tony Leung and the limpid newcomer Tang Wei betray not a hint of prudishness. Wei galvanizes the audience in the few chances she gets to cut loose with honest emotion, but mostly Lee makes his lovers trudge through surreptitious glances and cryptic behavior. His misguided restraint marginalizes the movie. “Lust, Caution” seems destined to be remembered as little more than a curiosity, the handsome Chinese art film with the realistic bedroom calisthenics.
LISTEN: Lust, Caution