'Lust, Caution'

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Mak Tai Tai, then called Wong Chia Chi, was, as were many Chinese at that time, a refugee, a young and innocent freshman at a university where she meets the idealistic and handsome theater director Kuang Yu Min (Chinese pop star Wang Leehom). Impelled by her crush on the director, Wong Chia Chi attaches herself to his dramatic troupe. It turns out that she is a natural actress, emotional enough to cry at movies but possessed as well of a gift for improvisation and dissimulation. When Kuang wants to move from theater to actual political action, she of course goes along.

Kuang's idea is to set a trap for and then assassinate Mr. Yee, already a top collaborator. An entire fake life is to be constructed for Wong Chia Chi, assigned to remake herself into the wealthy young wife Mak Tai Tai, who is to befriend Yee's wife with an eye toward becoming Mr. Yee's mistress, the easier to lead him to his death.

Wong Chia Chi falls easily into this impersonation, and Mr. Yee is unmistakably attracted to her. But once this point is reached, nothing goes simply, nothing happens the way anyone anticipated. Kuang and his troupe of tyro assassins are younger and more in over their heads than they realize, and things get emotionally and operationally out of hand with a rapidity that is stunning.

Yet, fatefully, this is only the beginning of the story. Coincidence places Mr. Yee and the woman he thinks of as Mak Tai Tai in each other's orbits three years later, and again this woman, more mature, not as naive or idealistic as she was before, agrees to restart the plot.

The relationship between Mr. Yee and this woman with a divided identity is the central dynamic of "Lust, Caution," and it is especially compelling because both participants are playing roles within roles, engaging in intricate double and triple games that get so complex they become ensnared in entanglements neither one anticipates or wants. Mutual deception, it turns out, has consequences on all sides of the equation.

The one place the protagonists are naked, both literally and psychologically, is when they make love, and the sex scenes in "Lust, Caution" are both explicit and essential to understanding character and motivation. Though the sex is graphic, it is by no means loving; in fact the hostility of the first encounter recalls the sexual initiation in "Brokeback Mountain." While they might not admit it, this appears to be the only place where the protagonists are honest with each other, where the complex, tortured, ever-changing relationship between them plays itself out.

Leung, used to emotional complexity after six films with director Wong Kar Wai, is excellent, but the film's breakout performance is by Tang Wei, who brings a shocking intensity and a remarkable range of emotions to the table. The 27-year-old actress has worked in theater and television, but the fact that Ingmar Bergman is her favorite director has stood her in good stead here. Tang Wei so connected with this tormented woman that by the end of shooting, she says, "the character wanted to hold me, like the roots of a tree."

The tree that supported her, and the whole film, through an exhausting 118-day shooting schedule was Lee, whose mastery of the filmmaking process increases with every project and who felt especially close to this one. Surrounding himself with an excellent team, including his longtime editor Tim Squyres, composer Alexandre Desplat and production/costume designer Pan Lai, Lee has made a film of ambition and accomplishment, one that is both a summation of all he knows and a promise of even greater achievement in the future.


"Lust, Caution." MPAA rating: NC-17 for some explicit sexuality. Running time: 2 hours, 38 minutes. In limited release.

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