Lust, Caution (2007)

Lust, Caution (Ang Lee, 2007)
Mandarin Title: Se, Jie

Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is such a handsome, handsome film. Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who also shot Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005) turning the cold wilderness of cowboy country into the perfect getaway for the homosexual lovers, likewise turned Shanghai under Japanese occupation, complete with the visually depicted sufferings and with its streets littered with corpses who were either shot in the head by trigger-happy Japanese soldiers or just passed on to the next world from sheer starvation, into the perfect locale for political and romantic intrigue between a spy Wang (Wei Tang) and her target Yee (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), a high ranking officer of the government established by the collaborators.

The film is so handsomely shot that even the explicit sex scenes, which begin only halfway through the film, have a particular quality of politeness or courtesy. True, the choreographed bed scenes are at times violent even bordering on morbid (especially the first time Yee succeeds in having his way on Wang; he rips her dress off and forces himself into her without a trace of compassion) but you can sense that Lee insists on grace, form and passable pressure when there should be boundless tension and callous power struggles between his two sexual beings. In other words, Lee is merely an inch away from being truly uncompromising, but decided to stay within the boundaries of good taste and propriety.

The many sexual positions, at times shocking, where both Lee's actors are drenched in lustful sweat, their limbs entangled with each other, and every bit of their bodily hairs and private parts are exposed to the watchful gazes of the audience are all too artful and passionate to be completely effective, at least in depicting the inevitable descent of the two individuals into the uncharted territory of emotional complexity.

Lee is a director who is always available for compromise (quite frustratingly so), and is always very polite in his films (even the gay cowboy movie, which was so overwhelmingly praised by almost everyone, is too cordial and civil to create an authentic altering stir). There seems to be no room for indecency in Lee's cinematic vocabulary, making Lust, Caution, despite its steamy bed scenes that somehow feel afraid to border chaotic or brazen, a step forward for the director.

Lee's gaze is unfortunately asexual. He operates as a passive observer, unflinching when a man is murdered by several stabbings, unsatisfyingly disinterested when Wang is deflowered for an unpracticed cause. Unlike Catherine Breillat, who in her several films (Romance (1999) and Anatomy of Hell (2004)) has mastered a female approach to sex, or Russ Meyer (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)), Tinto Brass (Salon Kitty (1976)), or even Lars Von Trier (Breaking the Waves (1996)), filmmakers (not necessarily effective ones) whose kinky and sometimes longing approaches to sex offer uniquely masculine perspectives, Lee's use of sex is merely perfunctory (but still seductively beautiful). He is exact and direct in his measurements, disappointingly afraid to be gratuitous or pornographic. Judge me now, but I wanted more.

Sex, which comprises around ten minutes of the lengthy running time, is central to the film. The true conversation piece of Lust, Caution, far more important than the loud gossipy discussions about husbands' politics and contraband over several games of mahjong and the whispered yet inutile plans of assassinating important Japanese collaborators, is spoken amidst the choked moans and the staggered breathing. Both victim and victimizer become vulnerable to the hazards of their repressed and tortured hearts, finding solace from their respective real life roles in the heat of their combined bodies. In a city corroded by war and intrigue, solace is indeed attractive if not tempting, that even the most hardened of individuals welcome the safety of such comfort, forever blurring the lines that separate right and wrong, loyalty and disgrace, love and lust.

The Ice Storm (1997)

The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997)

Ang Lee's status as one of the more important directors of this generation has been solidified by his existential swordplay adventure Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Academy Award-nominated homosexual romantic weeper Brokeback Mountain (2005). Of course, there's that failed yet interesting attempt to put comic book hero the Hulk into philosophical perspective and a bunch of relationship comedies set within his Asian-American cultural context. In 1997, Ang Lee directed The Ice Storm from a screenplay adapted from a Rick Moody novel by his long-time collaborator James Schamus. The moody drama about the lives of two dysfunctional suburban families, I thought, is Ang Lee's most accomplished film.

Thanksgiving week and the Hoods are preparing for the arrival of their son, Paul (Tobey Maguire). What seems like a normal suburban middle-class family is in fact a bunch of discordant relationships surely bursting with repressed emotions. Ben (Kevin Kline) and Elena (Joan Allen) have put off marriage counseling in the guise that their marriage is actually going very well. Their fourteen year old daughter Wendy (Christina Ricci) is experimenting with her sexuality with her boyfriend, Mikey (Elijah Wood), one of the two sons of the Hoods' nextdoor neighbors, the Carvers. The Carvers are in a similar mess. The patriarch Jim (Jamey Sheridan) is always away for business, while his wife Janey (Sigourney Weaver), taking advantage of her husband's frequent prolonged leaves, maintains an affair with Ben. Sandy, the youngest of the Carver siblings, is an introverted mess.

The Ice Storm is a complicated relationship piece whose success hinges on atmosphere and mood. The screenplay by Schamus is pretty detailed and the dialogue externally calm yet brimming with context. There's a curious absence of rhythm in the film. Instead, Lee allows the events to flow, and the characters to trigger what I think is a natural reaction in the film's setting. Interestingly, the film's backdrop is during the 70's where America is facing a political crisis with Richard Nixon's administration. More interestingly, the adults in the film care more for alcohol and swingers' games rather than the state of the nation, while it is the children who follow-up the political weather. A visible boundary separates the concerns of the adults and the children, and as a result, creates a hindrance to normal familial functions.

Lee depicts with painful clarity the irony that subsists in American suburbia: where discontent, boredom, repression, and amorality displaces the human need to actually communicate. In a telling scene between Ben Hood and Janey Carver, Ben tries to woo Janey into small talk. Janey boredly replies "I don't need another husband." Even the seemingly amoral act of infidelity has turned into a mere bartering of their naked bodies in the efforts of extinguishing their primal and animalistic needs.

Lee begins the film with a narration by Paul Hood about how the family unit is one's biggest enemy, basing his observations from a Fantastic Four comic book where Mr. Fantastic had to sacrifice his son. It is an interesting note from Paul, who is perhaps the most disassociated character in the film. His perceptions are based mostly from the news he gathers from his sister, and the usual external quirks he observes during his short visits. I believe that Paul's observation runs counter to the two suburban families' experience. Unlike the comic book tale, the complexities of these family's dysfunction do not arise out of the members' superpowers, or in the real world and its inherent personalities, but by a society that has lost all notion of what is moral, as observed in a larger perspective of the nation's politics. Unlike the superheroes which are given the power to do as they please without the otherworldly guidance of fate and cosmic design, the characters of this film would go on doing their thing if it weren't for a sudden impetus for change, the titular ice storm, that would serve saving grace for the two families.