Lust, Caution

Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is a thriller of the highest order, art that truly entertains and engages while journeying its audience through the darkest realms of historical truth and exposing deep seeded secrets of the human psyche with every gripping and emotionally crushing new twist or turn. There’s really nothing more you could ask for from a film.

Newcomer Tang Wei gives one of film’s most beautiful and composed debut performances as Wang Jiazhi, a young woman who is recruited in China circa WWII to seduce a Japanese conspirator and organize his execution. She begins her mission as one of several young students who act on an urge to serve their country and end up getting in over their heads when they send Wang as an unofficial spy into the realm of Mr. Yee (Tony Leung) via a friendship with Mrs. Yee (Joan Chen). Once she has infiltrated the man’s life and become an object of his desire, she takes on a more official role as a vital player for actual government agencies in pursuit of the traitorous Yee. Soon enough the fun and games are over and Wang has fully committed herself, body and soul, to the cause of ensnaring Mr. Yee and luring him onto a stage set for his demise.

From start to finish the film is an intoxicating epic that marks a rare combination of psychological complexity and intense, edge of your seat narrative progression. The sheer sting of the conceptual circumstance at hand could shatter the complacency of the average thriller. Wang is a uniquely original protagonist with a gentle demeanor and a strength for summoning up necessary courage to effectively and repeatedly place herself at the mercy of a man she despises with every fiber of her being. The pain and confusion of her predicament as it stretches across many years of physical and moral compromise is absolutely staggering. And Ang Lee has never been surer or more deliberate with his content and pacing. It’s a carefully crafted film with a very deliberate tone and pace. It’s never dull but it’s certainly slow building. By the time it reaches its conclusion Lee has layered so much danger and emotional ambiguity into the narrative that each passing second pounds with the possibility of failure and potentially deadly consequences. He takes his time in saying what he wants to say but by the time he reaches his final, unbelievably perfect frame you’re bound to be bowled over by this masterpiece.

Grade: A