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Rating: Awarded the Golden Lion at the latest Venice Film Festival, "Lust, Caution" (translated here, simply and somewhat blandly, as "Lussuria") is the latest effort by the Taiwanese director, who with this film embarks on a kind of "return to origins": after the Western settings of the excellent "Brokeback Mountain" and the mediocre "Hulk," he returns to tell, in fact, a typically oriental story, with atmospheres closer to the earlier "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (obviously different from a temporal/scenographic point of view).
The film, based on a short story by writer Eileen Chang, narrates a murky spy story set against the backdrop of the Second World War. Wang Jiazhi is a young woman, a member of a group of Chinese revolutionary students allied with the resistance against the Japanese, who slowly slips into a dangerous game of sentimental intrigue with collaborator Mr. Yee in order to seduce him and make him an easy target for an ambush by the resistance: but the strategy will soon turn into passion, into love, into betrayal....
I spoke of a return to origins because with this film the director uses Mandarin as the official language of filming and works with Bill Kong (producer of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon") and James Schamus, a screenwriter and producer with whom he has worked on no fewer than 9 films, including "Brokeback Mountain." The film reveals from the start a particular atmosphere, notable attention to detail, to the play of glances, gestures, the tendency to let "the images speak" through long (but never tiring) moments of introspection and silence. The heaviness and complexity of the plot are tempered through a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, an attempt that, while initially confusing the viewer a bit, ultimately proves essential to fully understanding the plot.
The dialogues, in particular, are of rare beauty due, probably, to the use of a very formal and structured language. The setting is nearly perfect, with a Shanghai devastated by war and drenched by rain, immersed in pain and sadness, and made even more fascinating by photography that favors darkness over light, artificial light over natural light. It is necessary to spend a few words also on the controversial sex scenes that cost the film a cut of as much as 30 minutes in China and censorship and bans in America and Europe: the protagonists' encounters are undeniably strong for commercial cinema standards, with shots that leave little to the imagination and depict dirty, violent, carnal sex. However, I believe this is fundamental to the success of a film that, aside from narrating a troubled relationship, has as its theme the complexity of the human soul, with its fantasies, depravations, emotions, and also highlights how weak the boundary is between love, passion, sensuality, betrayal, and carnality, factors that here mix in a whirlwind of complex situations.
In conclusion, an excellent film, one of the best of this year if not recent years, with acting and atmosphere as its strengths.
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