rzajac I've grown sort of conservative in my old age. I used to be an avant gardist. I rejoiced in chaos and meaninglessness: I believe in narrative, now.That's why I rate this flick so high. It's a good example of a film that *perfectly* fulfills the purpose of narrative. A story is told, the detail is pitch-perfect, time flows like the "jiang"; the great concourse; and the drama is very direct, pointed right straight at the primal twin issues of love and power, refusing to look away from predictable and unpredictable outcomes.This is a perfect story. And you get the impression that Lee Ang knew *exactly* how high he had to rise to meet this extraordinary occasion, and he did so rise.I do want to touch on the key point of the movie--since it seems so many commenters here missed out on that. No spoiler here: In fact, the following may help you if you're about the watch the flick.Se, Jie has one thing in common with Inglourious Basterds, strange to say. But they do squarely share a theme: Can it really happen?: Could (should?) artists get sick and tired of winning all the moral battles, and decide to reach out and win a *real* battle; a real-world battle for truth and justice?And... yes: This gets directly tied to the deep, unspeakable tragedy at the end of Se, Jie.(And, bear in mind, this isn't the *only* theme; Se, Jie has a number of themes, at least as important as this one.)It's a great movie; one of those that you need to watch *carefully* before you die.

cinemajesty Film Review: "Lust, Caution" (2007)This Venice Film Festival in its 64th Edition anticipating Erotic Thriller directed by Ang Lee as follow-up to Academy Award Winning picture "Brokeback Mountain" for Best Director and further revealing an understatement version versus Paul Verhoeven's effect-driven "Basic Instict" (1992) delivers additional suspense and visualized tensions between the precisely prepared cast members led by Chinese movie star Tony Leung as Mr. Yee, a governmental influenced decision maker in an war-occupied China of year 1942 and actress Wei Tang, who together deliver an honest look on how NC-17 rated motion picture entertainment looks like for an U.S. domestic market with a three explicitly infused scenes of sexual intercourse between encounters from oral, anal to vaginal sex practices in an skillfully captured use of sound design and camera motions in fields of vertical and horizontal planes by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who serves his director well in stark lighting to strong separated color themes of blue, green and black to find the story about revolting students in pre-world-war-2 China 1938 infiltrate governmental agencies over years to come without shying away even from murder to self-prostitution in order to liberate the people of their country from a Japanese stranglehold, which so beautifully finds its cinematic visualization under Ang Lee's direction in the relationship between the high-sparking chemistry of the two leading cast members.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

kluseba This Chinese movie is a visually stunning drama that convinces with two extremely talented main actors that incarnate two credible and fascinating characters. On one side, you have the charming, naive and shy student Wong Chia Chi who gets coincidentally involved into the resistance movement against Japanese occupation and the Chinese puppet government in Hong Kong back in 1938. She gets introduced to the social circle of Mister Yee's wife in order to approach, then seduce and ultimately trap him. The special agent and recruiter of the puppet government is brutal towards his enemies, emotionally cold and very experienced.Wong Chia Chi becomes Misses Mai and is able to seduce her target but when the resistance movement is ready to get the enemy killed, he moves to Shanghai with his family. The group's plans get discovered and result in a twisted crime after which the organization falls apart and disappears. Four years later, Wong Chia Chi also moves to Shanghai for studies and lives a solitary live in depression and poverty, abandoned by her father and her friends. She meets one of her old partners again who introduces her to an egoistic, pitiless and vengeful undercover agent of the Kuomintang who wants to finish what had begun four years ago. Wong Chia Chi takes the identity of Misses Mai again and soon meets her target on a regular basis. They start to have a relationship that is quite brutal, cold and physical in the beginning but the two solitary souls soon start to develop true emotions towards each other. As the resistance starts to concretely organize the assassination of the target, the matured young woman has to decide which path to choose.The story of this movie is intriguing thanks to a very strong acting and a progressive character development. The film features brutal and cold sex scenes close to a rape but these scenes ultimately get more and more aesthetic and passionate. This radical contrast perfectly portrays both characters and the essence of the movie. In many movies, sex scenes are not very well acted and remain superficial but these ones really make sense, incarnate a certain spirit and feel extremely real as if the two actors were truly in a relationship which is though not the case.The movie is quite slow paced in the beginning and takes some time to kick off which might be difficult for some people but at the same time, this flick gives us a credible portrait of the difficult life during the Second Sino-Japanese War. As it's often the case for contemporary Chinese movies, a lot of budget went into the beautiful costumes, the authentic decorations and the detailed locations. All these elements drown the viewer into a very credible past world and develop a great atmosphere.In the end, any fan of contemporary Chinese movies should check this solid production out. Be sure to view the almost flawless uncensored version that is much more authentic, complex and dynamic than the shortened one.

potteries The title of the film "Lust, Caution", may also be read in Chinese as a "coloured ring", which is the object of crucial significance in the film. The pink-coloured diamond ring signifies the love that Mr Yee had for Chia Chi which Chia Chi realized when she put on the ring in the shop, where a trap was set for Mr Yee. In this pivotal moment, she then made the crucial decision to save her lover, warned him to get away, and as a result, sealed her own fate. Some people criticized the film for being too explicit, which I think missed the point of the film title. Like the film title, which says it's about lust (and ostensibly a warning against it), so in the film, the explicitness made it seems like it's about lust. In fact it's actually about love - Chia Chi's lack of love in her life, and when she found it in Mr Yee, she was prepared to sacrifice herself and her belief for her lover. The love is symbolised by the coloured ring, a possible reading of the film title, and the dual-meaning of the film title encapsulates the duality in the film, and the more important element is the love, not the lust.This film can be seen as a companion piece to Brokeback Mountain. At the end of the film when Mr Yee sat on her bed and realized what he had lost, mirrors the ending scene of Brokeback Mountain with Ennis with Jack's shirt in the closet. Both grieved for the lost love, except that in Mr Yee's case it was him that sent his own true love to death. What's captured in the ending sequence in both films is the image of loss, regret and loneliness of both men.