Sè, Jiè (Lust, Caution) (2007)

I keep seeing movies about women enduring unimaginable pain--Frozen River, Winter's Bone, and now Lust, Caution. Next up: Lars Von Trier's entire catalogue! (Haha, just kidding. I will never watch Antichrist. Just so we're clear, if you would like coverage of Antichrist, this blog will disappoint you. May I recommend the MDCC Media Center instead?)

Okay, well, that turned into a pretty weird lars von tangent. Back to the movie at hand.

Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei) is a college student in Hong Kong in 1938. A hunky dude named Kuang (Wang Leehom) recruits her and four other students to perform a patriotic play (in order to drum up pro-China, anti-Japan feelings). The audience eats it up, and the six students, giddy with success, decide to take the logical next step: assassinating a collaborator. Chia Chi poses as Mrs. Mak, wife to a conveniently rich and even more conveniently absent businessman; her job is to act sexy and draw the target, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), into the students' house, where her co-conspirators will kill him. She almost pulls it off, but Yee is too cautious and insufficiently lustful, and he leaves.

Mrs. Mak doesn't get another chance to seduce Mr. Yee; he moves back to Shanghai. The students are demoralized, but wait--it gets worse! Yee's bodyguard shows up, catches the defeated would-be assassins packing up “Mr. and Mrs. Mak’s house,” and threatens to expose them. They murder him. How do they murder him? Why, very slowly and brutally and inexpertly. Chia Chi runs away, horrified, and that's the end of the first half of the movie.

Three years later, Kuang finds her in Shanghai. He is now a member of the grown-up resistance, and he asks Chia Chi to reprise her role--Yee is now head of the secret police, and the resistance does not like him at all. Mrs. Mak and Mr. Yee start fucking. I found the sex scenes disturbing, stressful, and fraught with uncertainty. That's how one is supposed to react, I think, so great job, Ang Lee et al., but YEESH. Anyway, the uncertainty: the uncertainty is key. Does Yee love Mrs. Mak? How does she feel about him? Will he get assassinated? Will she get caught?

I refer to the main character alternately as Wong Chia Chi and as Mrs. Mak because, over the course of the movie, I found myself forgetting that there was ever a Chia Chi. She's completely divorced from her life, transformed from college student into high society wife. On a bus in Hong Kong, Chia Chi tries her first cigarette because her friend tells her "Artists have to smoke." A few years later, in Shanghai, she stares longingly at every cigarette she sees. She becomes a smoker, because that's how smoking works. Likewise, Wong Chia Chi becomes--to what extent is debatable--Mrs. Mak, because that’s what happens (or can happen) if you pretend to be someone every day. I’m hedging because the character of Wong Chia Chi/Mrs. Mak is pretty opaque. I'm not sure who she ends up being or what she ends up feeling.

When does she enjoy having sex with Yee? Never? Always? Sometimes? It's necessary for Mrs. Mak to want him, but Chia Chi really seems to, too. And that may be why sex is such a powerful centerpiece for this dangerous relationship. Everything else is a lie, but their feral sex seems like it must be honest. It is the most compelling, most emotional thing we see Wong and Yee doing together, so my interpretation of their relationship is largely an interpretation of their sex.

Also, side issue: Chia Chi loses her virginity in a singularly unsentimental fashion. During the Hong Kong plot, the students decide she needs sexual experience before seducing Mr. Yee, so one of her friends, an awkward, sexually bland young man, helps her practice. The tediousness of Chia Chi's first sexual experiences were, for me, a silent specter over her relationship with Yee--whatever he is, he's not boring in bed. I wondered if she would have been as deeply affected if she'd had intense sex before. "With whom?" you ask? (Thank you for asking.) With Kuang! They totally crush on each other. I really wanted those crazy kids to make it work.

It’s funny: I thought the strongest and weakest elements of Lust, Caution were the same as in another Ang Lee movie: Brokeback Mountain. In both, I loved the characters. I loved seeing superb actors create these absorbing (and super sad) relationships. But in both movies, I was less enamored than I would have been, had the pacing been quicker. Sorry for being a dumb clod or whatever, but I think these movies are TOO SLOW.

This might be a weird comparison, but watching Lust, Caution was sort of like reading Perdido Street Station: I read Perdido in little 2-5 page bites for a WHILE, but at a certain point, I felt a kick (no incepto), and I read the rest in one sitting. The second half of Lust, Caution has what I wanted from all of Lust, Caution: a slow pace that's tense and engrossing. That's a different sort of slowness than in the first half, which felt a little lethargic. I think I would have loved the movie if it had been more ruthlessly edited. (Like this blog post, am I right, fellas?)

Okay, now there are things I need to make sense of in this movie, and so I have created some DISCUSSION TOPICS. They are posted after the break, and they contain spoilers. Please do comment on these Very Important Issues if you've 1) made it this far and 2) seen the movie.


Discussion topics:

-Did Chia Chi join the Hong Kong scheme primarily because of political conviction or because of her crush on Kuang?

-Why is she so bad at mahjong? I felt like this was a symbol for something in the story, but I couldn't figure it out. Was it just supposed to indicate her distraction?

-What role, if any, did the ring play in her decision to warn Yee?

-At the roadblock, when it becomes apparent that Chia Chi is going to be arrested and executed, she pulls the cyanide pill out of her coat's collar and looks at it. Why doesn't she take it? 1) In hope that she won't die. 2) In hope that she will see Yee again. 3) She feels obligated to get executed alongside her friends. 4) Other.

-Why doesn't Yee spare Chia Chi? Could he have done so and kept his job, which had really great benefits (dental and vision)?

-What kind of birth control was available in China circa 1940? Wong Chia Chi never evinces any concern about pregnancy, and while I’m aware that 1) it is not important to the story and 2) birth control existed before the Pill, I could not stop wondering.