I have been disappointed with all the critics who dismissed this film as too slow, too long, nothing ever happens, sex is too ugly and " I don't get the ending, it's improbable that she would do it". One feminist blogger couldn't understand why Wong should even like Mr. Yee!
So I am glad I read Andrew Sarris' brilliant review of this film. Many critics just don't get it. This is a film about moral choice and female psyche, about self and politics, about the grayness of collaborationists and the cruelty of the Japanese, the Communists, and the Nationalists. There is no Hollywood-style resolution or redemption but plenty of nuance, ambiguity and moral grayness which, I guess, dooms this film at the box office and in the eyes of the critics. One critic complained that there were too much subtitled dialogue and not enough revealing action.
People have no problem with two gay cowboys wandering about Brokeback Mountain for two hours, but they have a problem with the 2+ hours of Lust, Caution because it's in a foreign language, staged in a foreign land, in a foreign war that we don't understand, and most of all, in the nuanced culture of Eileen Chang's Chinese female world. They wanted a heroine like the one in Black Book, a slapstick and one-dimensional movie that everybody compares Lust, Caution to (in an unfavorable way)
In fact, Chinese audience found the film too fast-paced. They wish Ang Lee would take his time because much is revealed about war time China in the mah-jongg games, in the characterizations of the tai-tai's, in the students, in the psyche of the occupied, and most of all, in the sexuality and desire of domination and submission. Lust, Caution not only became the highest grossing film in this year's Chinese film industry (and I include Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan into this mix), but it has become an iconic film, a cultural phenomenon. Writers are using the term "post-Lust, Caution" the way they use "post-modern" in describing the unwrapping of previously taboo subjects: China's collaborationist history and Chinese female sexuality and psyche.
I have been disappointed with all the critics who dismissed this film as too slow, too long, nothing ever happens, sex is too ugly and " I don't get the ending, it's improbable that she would do it". One feminist blogger couldn't understand why Wong should even like Mr. Yee!
So I am glad I read Andrew Sarris' brilliant review of this film. Many critics just don't get it. This is a film about moral choice and female psyche, about self and politics, about the grayness of collaborationists and the cruelty of the Japanese, the Communists, and the Nationalists. There is no Hollywood-style resolution or redemption but plenty of nuance, ambiguity and moral grayness which, I guess, dooms this film at the box office and in the eyes of the critics. One critic complained that there were too much subtitled dialogue and not enough revealing action.
People have no problem with two gay cowboys wandering about Brokeback Mountain for two hours, but they have a problem with the 2+ hours of Lust, Caution because it's in a foreign language, staged in a foreign land, in a foreign war that we don't understand, and most of all, in the nuanced culture of Eileen Chang's Chinese female world. They wanted a heroine like the one in Black Book, a slapstick and one-dimensional movie that everybody compares Lust, Caution to (in an unfavorable way)
In fact, Chinese audience found the film too fast-paced. They wish Ang Lee would take his time because much is revealed about war time China in the mah-jongg games, in the characterizations of the tai-tai's, in the students, in the psyche of the occupied, and most of all, in the sexuality and desire of domination and submission. Lust, Caution not only became the highest grossing film in this year's Chinese film industry (and I include Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan into this mix), but it has become an iconic film, a cultural phenomenon. Writers are using the term "post-Lust, Caution" the way they use "post-modern" in describing the unwrapping of previously taboo subjects: China's collaborationist history and Chinese female sexuality and psyche.