sleeping with the enemy

The last shot in Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution" is one of the few in the film that involves a bed without some aberrant sex act being committed on its surface. The sex is the big elephant in the room for most of the film and at times it's all most too distracting. The NC-17 rating, the edited version distributed in China, and the critic's description of the sex as being "violent", "kinky", and "softcore" can pique any viewer's interest, depending on what you're into cinematically and sexually, but it left me feeling oddly cold. Maybe that's the point because the sex is between two characters burning with all of their might to release the inward pain they are too ashamed to reveal in front of others. This isn't romantic or pretty lovemaking. It's hard, uncompromising, and at times bleak. The first scene is masterfully built up with piles of tension as a spy (Tang Wei) for the resistance in occupied Shanghai, under the guise of a wealthy socialite, meets her match in the monstrous form of Mr. Yee (a devastatingly nasty Tony Leung). He rips her clothes off, commands her with his belt, and aggressively makes love to her. It's borderline rape and one wonders if this kind of sex is necessary in cinema. It's aesthetically done well (the confident camera movements and expert editing), but what does it say about us as an audience with a possible appetite for this kind of carnality? The sex after that explosive scene becomes more consensual, harder, and lengthier. At a certain point I was bored with the athletic feats of Wei and Leung, but admire their daring ability to fornicate with a harsh vulnerability for millions to see.

Sex, or rather the hot and complicated desire for another human, is a thread in Lee's work. Two sheep herders in a tent, bored swingers in 70s suburbia, and love triangles gone wrong in the world of Jane Austen have established Lee as a champion for the passionate and sometimes doomed and unrequited feelings we possess that drives us to another. Lee discusses "Lust, Caution" on a Weekend Edition interview on NPR as one his most personal films which may sound perverse, but as he so often reminds us in his films that might just be human nature.

Click here to listen.