Movie rev: Lust,Caution
Click to viewI'm not going to write much but the spoilery parts will be written in white, so if suspicious gaps appear, just paint the text :)
First of all, I've had the movie on dvd for ages. I think I bought it nearly a year ago? I remember buying it in Turku but for some reason I never got to watch it. Then my sister borrowed it from me (because we're both huge fans of Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and it was only recently when I got it back.
So, now I've seen the enormously praised Lust,Caution and... Humhum.
Okay, the plot shortly: Wong (Wei Tang) lives in Shanghai under Japanese occupation. It's year 1942 and Second World War is raging. She and her friend join a patriotic drama group in university. Soon she has fallen in love with Kuang (Wang Lee Hom♥) and partly because of that, she decides to take a part in the group's attempt to try to take Mr. Yee's (Tony Leung) life. Yee is one of the biggest Chinese politicians of the time working for the Japanese-minded government. He's also the cruelest; without blinking an eye he has assigned brutal assassinations on the members of the resistance movement. He's intelligent, and highly suspicious about everyone around him. Murdering him seems impossible. Then, they realize Yee has taking a liking to Wong...
I think the movie's great. To put it simply, lol. The cinematography is mind-blowingly beautiful, and the actors are top-notch -even though Tony Leung's character is an über bad-ass, I watched him throughout the film with enticed eyes :D Also, it's a pleasure to see Wang Lee Hom again, and in a relatively big role. Kuang seems a little one-sided at first, but there's surprisingly lot to him, as we discover near the end of the film.
The movie is great but it isn't nice. The sex scenes are crazily violent. Yee does everything in his power to crack Wong, to dominate her, to make her his. Like I wrote in Facebook -is the movie one penis short of being K18(=R in Finnish system)? I've watched a lot of movies and the decision to label this K15 surprised me when it dawned on me how brutal the movie is in parts. They show pretty much everything -except that one beforementioned organ *is amused* So, I wouldn't recommend this if you're very sensitive about stuff like that. I've watched a lot of movies with strong erotic scenes, and even for me, this movie raised a blush on my cheeks.
I really enjoyed the first part of the film where the naive, enthusiastic drama group shows joyful, energetic, full of belief in their cause -they get submerged in their little role play, practicing shooting and making up lies to their parents. It's summer and everything is fine -they're full of dreams and fantasies and sure they're doing the right thing. Nothing can go wrong.
Well, of course everything goes, eventually. And related to that: one of my favourite scenes in the film is when the men of the group are forced to make their first killing in order not to blow their covers. They kill Kuang's old childhood friend, an unreliable jerk who's working for Yee and who has figured out what Wong, Kuang and the others are up to. The scene is rueful, as innocent youths confront the reality for the very first time. Kuang stabs him first, and soon his friends follow, stabbing Tsao again and again, each in their turn, to share the pain and to prove they're in this together. However, since they're not accustomed to killing and know nothing about it, the stabs don't hit the right places, and even though it's evident Tsao will not survive, he will not die either, starting to crawl away, slowly, bleeding like a hunted-down animal. The last of the men who still has his hands clean (literally and figuratively) looks at his blood-stained friends, and then, with an intimidated scream full of fearful rage, he takes the knife and attacks the escaping Tsao, stabbing him again and again in the back, nearly crying as doing so.
But, even that doesn't kill Tsao -his powers are running short, but he still manages to get to the hallway. He trips over and falls down the stairs. He stops moving but they all know he's still alive. In silence they stare at him. Then Kuang steps forward, sweaty, and grabs Tsao's neck and breaks it. Silence lands upon them once more; Kuang, bewildered tears in his eyes, looks up, shaking, only to see Wong, the girl he secretly loves, running away. It's then and there when he loses Wong -she escapes back to her home, and for three years, they're in no contact.
So, the movie is full of symbolism and strong emotions, as it's only expected from the director of such movies as Brokeback Mountain and Hidden Dragon, Crouching Tiger. However, the movie isn't boring or difficult to watch -I took a peek at the clock for the first time around 1hour 45minutes, and then the next thing I knew was that the film's closing credits started scrolling across the screen :D And the length of the movie is 152 minutes! I was so lost in the world of betrayal and gambling with lives that I totally went with the plot. I've always loved hustler and crime stories of this kind, and no matter how gruesome the sex is in the movie, it makes it only more interesting! My mind was working with the characters' motives all the time; trying to understand Wong and Yee was challenging yet a lot of fun, in some twisted way. The characters don't leave you cold, and that's the most important thing in a movie, right? :DDD
So, watch it if you have time. Four stars!
Lately, I haven't had time or money to watch many films. I watched Transformers when it was circulated in the Finnish tv for the first time, and then there was a couple of rented films I watched with Juha (The Legend of the Evil Lake which is a wuxia piece, The Golden Medallion because J loves Jackie Chan, and then there was The Calendar Girls which I've seen like a million times before but it never ceases to make my heart flutter^o^). The last film I went to see in the cinema was Valentine's Day, which is PRETTY FUCKING AWESOME YEAH. Not quite as good as Love Actually is but nearly funny at least, with all the amazing actors and addicting love trouble :DDD It was fun to see Ashton Kutcher in a slightly more serious role.
I WANT TIME TO WATCH MOVIES.
I want to see the following so baaaaad:
*Princess and the Frog
*I Love You Phillip Morris
*The Men Who Stare At Goats
*Alice in Wonderland
*Prince of Persia (?Maybe?)