Lust's labour's lost
Having finally watched Ang Lee's latest erotic thriller Lust, Caution, based on popular Chinese writer Eileen Chang's 1979 novella of the same title, I can understand why the film is a box-office flop in the US, despite Lee's Brokeback Mountain fame.
Hong Kong's audience has a special place in its hearts for Eileen Chang, whose life was closely intertwined with the city during the second world war. With popular Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai as the leading man, and Oscar winner Ang Lee as director, the movie was highly acclaimed in Asia and an instant box-office draw. Yet in the US, by end of last year, it had grossed barely US$5 million. Reviews by film critics and ordinary moviegoers were universally lacklustre.
Ten minutes into the movie, it is not difficult to understand why American viewers were 'struggling to stay awake'. Undeniably, a big part of the problem is cultural. It is to be expected that an American audience would find long and repeated scenes of Shanghai ladies playing mahjong and flashing multi-carat stones on their delicate fingers a big yawn. The plot is as unconvincing as it is contrived.
Even for a Hongkonger, it requires a gigantic suspension of judgment to believe that a bunch of inexperienced undergraduates sojourning in Hong Kong would be sophisticated and resourceful enough to execute an assassination plot, targeting Mr Yi, the powerful and well-protected henchman-in-chief of the Japanese puppet, Wang Jingwei .
The plot involves the students incurring substantial expenses to buy a luxury apartment and other paraphernalia, and giving one of the female students, the alluring Wang Jiazhi - played by Chinese actress Tang Wei - a new identity and plenty of cash to lose at the mahjong table. As can be expected of hot-headed youngsters unschooled in espionage, their cover is almost blown - but not before Wang Jiazhi pays a high price, by sacrificing her virginity, and the students stumble on to killing an inconsequential Japanese collaborator. In the fist and knife fight culminating in the killing, an opportunity for Hitchcock-like suspense (such as Steven Spielberg successfully recreates in a similar scene in Saving Private Ryan) presents itself but is missed.
Not only is the assassination plot unrealistic and amateurish, the story crawls forward at a slow, boring pace, until it hots up as Wang Jiazhi and Mr Yi finally get physical. Under Lee's direction, Leung and Tang staged probably some of the boldest sex scenes by Chinese standards. Yet, compared to similar scenes in other modern classics, like the 1991 French hit movie The Lover, or The Piano and The English Patient, repeated shots of naked, contorted bodies titillate but fail to ignite emotions.