Crotching tigers, hidden motivation

Near the beginning of Lust, Caution, Ang Lee’s new “erotic spy thriller” (that’s the closest generic term I can come up with), there’s a scene where young Hong Kong student Wang JiaZhi (impressively played by Tang Wei) watches Casablanca alone in a dark movie theater. Tears stream freely down her cheeks as llsa tries to explain her complicated feelings to Victor. There’s always a risk when you invoke a classic movie in your film, because people will tend to compare the two. Fortunately for Lee, Lust, Caution does not fall miserably far from the mark. It’s almost great.

Is “almost” enough, though, when you’re comparing a movie classic and this year’s obvious Oscar bait (it won top prize at the Venice Film Festival)? One thing in Ang Lee’s favor is that he never repeats himself, never makes a “typical” Ang Lee movie. True, Lust, Caution is based on a short story, just as his last movie (the oft-referenced Brokeback Mountain) was adapted and expanded from slim material. At close to two and a half hours, it doesn’t drag too, too much. It’s packed with details of life in Shanghai and Hong Kong under the Japanese occupation during the Second World War. Wang is a young student who, on a whim, joins a theater troupe (maybe to get closer to the passionate, idealistic director played by Wang Lee-Hom). She gets more than she bargains for, as the troupe cooks up a plan to assassinate Mr. Yee (played with pained brilliance by Tony Leung), a collaborator with the occupying Japanese government.

The central relationship, though, is between Wang and Yee, with the young actress being asked to pose as “Mrs. Mak” to “infiltrate” the Yee household  (through the mahjong table of Yee’s wife, played by Joan Chen) and get closer to the man the resistance calls “The Wolf.”

“Wolf” is pretty much on the mark. Leung plays Yee as a man who lives by his keener senses, sniffing out trouble and traitors. He circles the cheongsam-clad Wang with his eyes, then with his body, in some of the more, um, athletic sex scenes to be shown on the screen in years. (Clearly, Lee has consulted his Kama Sutra.) The idea is that Wang thinks she’s trapping Yee, but their bouts in bed leave them hopelessly entwined and intermingled, until it’s unclear who’s trapping whom.

This is the part of Lust, Caution that works, even if the sweaty bed-romping is out of tune with the slow period pace of much of the film. When Wei and Leung share screen time, the movie smolders; it sparks; there is definitely some serious chemical reaction going on (never mind speculating on whether the actors are actually “doing it” or not). This should be the real focus of Lust, Caution. Like other classic (and not-so-classic) movies where lust threatens to immolate a couple (think The Lover, Last Tango in Paris, 9 1/2 Weeks), Lee’s film is on track when exploring a dangerous rela-tionship. It’s on less-sure ground when tracking the theater/resistance group and its doings.

Lust, Caution’s main flaw, for me, is Wang’s shaky motivation throughout the film. She’s not depicted as a political creature, so her reason for joining a resistance group (and allowing herself to be sexually exploited again and again) seems a tad slim. Even murder doesn’t dissuade her from joining the gang again. Rather, she seems like a hapless pawn, one of those floating water lilies that gets plucked up or swept away by stronger currents. This makes it hard for us to imagine her as a hard-nosed femme fatale. It’s more believable when we see her swept up in the dangerous relationship that’s supposed to be just “an assignment.”

In this light, Lust, Caution somewhat resembles The Last Emperor — an epic tale of a royal scion who is clearly dwarfed by his circumstances. The cinematography (by Rodrigo Prieto) is also reminiscent of that Bertolucci classic, shifting tones and monochromatic shades meant to suggest Wang’s various fortunes. Lee’s Shanghai and Hong Kong are also given an impressively vintage feel: you can believe people lived this way, surrounded by rickshaws and an amazing tapestry of Chinese tailors, French bistros and Arabic jewelers, even under Japanese occupation. Expect an Oscar for the film’s look and fashion, at the very least.

Seeing a trailer for Lust, Caution a few months back, I feared that Lee was “trying on” the Wong Kar-Wai look: lots of retro fashion and noir lighting. But while Wong Kar-Wai excels in evoking mood, he often pulls back from the central emotion of his male characters. Tony Leung’s character in In the Mood for Love, for example, is a cipher. Here, in Lust, Caution, Leung still draws on his trademark reserved energy and emotional display (not unlike Bogart in Casablanca, come to think of it), but we clearly see him as a character — however bad or flawed. His rape of Wang in one scene is not so much to show that he’s a brute, or likes it rough, but to reveal the schism between his true emotions and his usual treatment of women. We can almost believe that great sex is capable of punching through that hard and calculating exterior.

Another film Lust, Caution resembles in some respects is The English Patient, which focused on illicit lust in an African desert during World War II, with political overtones. Some people complained that Anthony Minghella’s film tried too hard to look like a modern classic, and dissed it for falling short of Casablanca. Well, there’s only one Casablanca. But I’ll take a couple near-great films (like Lust, Caution) over a truckload of big Hollywood rom-coms with revolting “meet-cute” moments any old day.