Do you like more Ang Lee or Wong Kar Wai? According to their complete oeuvre the answer is quite simple - at least for me. Kar-wai was always better in my eyes, the "real" Asian director: with his colours, storytelling talent, unbelievable designed clothes and interiors, perfect choice of music he embodied the 'difference', the extra value what you have never got from the Western cinema.
But 2007 came, and all these good working theories of their categorization have lapsed. They changed their roles: Kar Wai came out with some fake Hollywoodization of his whole career, which was compensated by Lee with his best movie ever. Lust, Caution contains exactly those elements, which were the ingredients of Kar Wai's mentioned 'difference'. Beautifully told story, low-key emotions mixed with stormy outbursts, unbelievable atmosphere provided by the whole design of the film, and perfect music.
It's a relief to write down these things, because the film didn't start this way. Actually it started exactly the way what made the distinction between the two directors. Women play mahjong around a table, when Mr. Yee (Tony Leung, who else?) enters the room, looking deeply at the most beautiful girl's eye and boom, there is love immediately. I just said to myself: Ok, this is Ang Lee, who isn't able to show those gentle, microscopic emotion-games, which made Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love so brilliant (if you want to know what I'm talking about, please check the latter lovers' first encounter in the staircase...). But luckily my hypotheses misled me this time: the story turns into a huge flashback (from 1942 to 1938) to show the origin of this exalted blink of an eye.
Because of the story is about Mr. Yee's and Wong Chia Chi's love; all the tragical-dramatical background is only a set around them: the drama of their relationship is a traditional love triangle, only the third pole isn't Yee's wife but the WWII, the Pacific War in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The tragedy's source isn't a third person, but the circumstances, the originally rotten situation of their "love".
To make the situation more understandable: Mr. Yee is working for the Japanese government, to serve the puppet government in Shanghai. Chia Chi is an orphan (her father left to England) who joins a theater troupe, which is actually a secret underground resistance cell with the main aim of assassinating China's traitor, Mr. Yee. Since the groupleader Kuang realizes Chi's abilities, they set up a plan: they are trying to get closer to Yee through Chi's acting "talent"...
Hidden emotions (Chi and Yee, Yee and Kuang, and the whole mahjong-table), sacrifices (Kuang's love towards the girl sacrificed for China's interest), lyings (could you lie to a face like Leung has?).
Some Chinese version of Verhoeven's Zwartboek. Hmm, actually it's a really good parallel..
8/10
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