East West - The Asian American Lifestyle Magazine

Ang Lee’s kung fu epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and his cowboy flick Brokeback Mountain may have crowned him with Oscar halos, but the consecutive hits were soon followed by a low tide in creativity for the director. “Maybe it was my mid-life crisis,” he recalls. The fear propelled him to revisit famed Chinese author Eileen Chang’s tenacious, but illusive novella “Se, Jei,”  which has haunted him for decades. “I realize that I should use the power and resources I have now to do something I have never done before.”

The result is Lee’s latest, Lust, Caution.

The director’s take on the story of failed espionage is a breathtaking battle of the sexes that fuels the sheets. Lust, Caution is a period drama set in the frays of fallen Shanghai between 1938 and 1942. Centering on hot-headed student Wong Chia Chi’s (Tang Wei’s feature film debut) spiraling downfall as an actress-turned-(KMT) spy, the film probes into the sense and sensibilities of men and women. Wong gives in to bodily pleasures in her mission to seduce and kill Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), then the most wanted spy of the Japanese regime in Shanghai.

Known in the West as China’s Greta Garbo, Chang was a celebrated woman of letters who spent more than 30 years revising the novella. Or rather, eliminating traces of herself in the suspicious, almost autobiographical, story. The tragic romance mirrors her short-lived marriage to Hu Lanching, a Renaissance man who was a Chinese spy for the Japanese regime in Shanghai.

Like generations of Chinese readers, Lee was bewitched by Chang’s lyrical prose and microscopic probe into human nature. Rejecting the notion that he “adapted” from the short story, Lee says he was just playing detective. The quest to unravel Chang’s true intentions became his driving creative force.  “It was like peeling onions, layers after layers,” he says. Although the sexual escapades were not mentioned, many clues were littered in the text suggesting the pair were dancing a dangerous tango. “I just take the hint and read between the lines,” Lee says. “I didn’t make up the sex scenes: they were there.”

The film version of “Se, Jei” manifests itself in intriguing, deceptive role plays. Se means color or anything that could stir the senses. Jei can mean restraints or a ring. A believer of Buddhism teachings, Lee says the scanty sex has its shock value and the interplay of the different meanings of the title generates endless dramatic tension. “In a way, acting and directing are all se,” he says. “After all, life is filled with illusions.”  For the film’s protagonist Wong, her fatal shortcoming lies in her failure to decipher the illusive truths and in her obsession in acting out her femme fatale role.

Embattled by Chinese critics and press when the novella was published in the 1950s, Lee thinks an ovation is overdue for Chang’s daring literary approach. “Eileen was probably the first contemporary author who wrote about Chinese women’s sexual consciousness,” Lee reckons. “Were there anything good Chinese women could get out of sex? I haven’t seen any until now.” Via the act, Lee says, Wong shreds her girlish innocence and finds her sense of purpose.

Set in a totally different time and place, Lee compares Lust, Caution to Brokeback Mountain. “They are both love stories, dealing with the same human emotions.”  The forbidden gay cowboys roam in a lost Eden in the Wyoming greens; whereas the spy and her prey journey through hell. Shooting outdoors for Brokeback was a bliss that nurtured the director’s body and mind. But filming Lust, Lee says, was a purgatory. The intensity and cruelty of the tryst was contrary to his temperament. The ordeal whitened the artist’s hair and almost pushed him to the verge of a mental breakdown.

Unlike the slow-brew response in the United States, Lust, Caution is a smash hit in Taiwan and Hong Kong, with its box office gross there surpassing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But still, he has low expectations for the film in the U.S. due to Lust’s rich Chinese cultural contexts – clacking mahjong games and the history of the Sino-Japanese war, Lee says, are not easy for Westerners to understand.

“If possible, American audiences should watch the film twice,” he says. “They are probably too busy reading the subtitles and are likely to miss the subtle visual cues and very fine acting,” Lee says, referring to the domestic, feminine war waging at the mahjong table—where the Chinese tai tais twitch their eyebrows and powdered faces to convey secrets and show off their diamonds: glittering symbols of their husbands’ rising statuses in the Japanese puppet government.

For those ears unfamiliar with Chinese dialects, they are also likely to miss the actresses’ satirical remarks flowing freely in Cantonese, Mandarin and Shanghainese—which give hints to the diasporic tension of the Chinese profiteers during the war.

The film is slapped with a harsh NG-17 rating in the U.S., but having no rating in mainland China has also posed a problem. All films screened in mainland Chinese cinemas must be suitable for both young and old, and because of this lack of film classifications, Lee was forced to create a director’s cut, removing the film’s explicit sex scenes and the students’ clumsy murder of a spy in Hong Kong. The director laments that the new version will “miss the essence of the work” and calls for China to establish a film rating system. “Many mainland Chinese reporters and film industry representatives saw the full version at Venice. They were really moved by it. I am sure this incident will prompt them to rethink the current state of censorship in China.”

Lust, Caution is now playing in select cities.

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