Lust, Caution—do any two words define the central dichotomy of human existence more succinctly? No mere movie, perhaps, could live up to such a richly evocative title, and Variety’s review of Ang Lee’s new espionage melodrama—which won the top prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, just two years after Lee’s Brokeback Mountain nabbed the same award—was only the first of many to complain that the film’s caution-to-lust ratio is less than favorable. Far too much has been made, hype-wise, of its explicit, few-holds-barred, NC-17 sex scenes, which Lee unleashes only after roughly two hours of minutely observed PG parrying; clearly, early viewers anticipated more heedless thrusting and fewer close-ups of mah-jongg tiles. Nor does it help that the film’s sleeping-with-the-enemy plot is nearly identical to that of Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, which is comparatively stupid but much more trashy, lurid fun. Still, if you can adjust your expectations a bit, and look at Lust, Caution as the Asian equivalent of a first-rate Merchant-Ivory picture—literate, resolutely old-fashioned, maybe a tad stodgy—you’ll find that its emotional power sneaks stealthily up on you.

Stealth and sneakiness happen to be the watchwords of Wang Jiazhi (newcomer Tang Wei), who, when we first meet her, in Japanese-occupied Shanghai circa the waning years of WWII, appears to be the indolent, glamorous young wife of a prosperous businessman. In the extended flashback that makes up most of the movie, however, we discover that Wang is actually a fiercely patriotic former drama student who’s volunteered to seduce high-ranking collaborator Mr. Yee (Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung, best known here from Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love and 2046), who’s reputed to be in charge of interrogations that double as murders. Since Mr. Yee is always closely guarded, both physically and emotionally, Wang’s fellow actor-radicals determine that their only shot at an assassination is to lure him into the sort of rash, reckless behavior characteristic of a torrid affair. Mr. Yee isn’t easily conquered, however, and when Wang finally does succeed in bedding him, she discovers—to her initial horror, then to her illicit pleasure—that his sexual appetites mirror his brutal politics.

Excerpt from Mike D'Angelo's review at The Las Vegas Weekly located HERE