Lust Caution Director
Jovanna Ponder
Lust, Caution (Chinese: 色戒; pinyin: S, Ji; Jyutping: Sik1Gaai3) is a 2007 erotic period espionage romantic mystery film[4] directed by Ang Lee, based on the 1979 novella of the same name by Eileen Chang. Lust, Caution is set in Hong Kong in 1938 and in Shanghai in 1942, when the city was occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army and ruled by the puppet government led by Wang Jingwei. The film depicts a group of Chinese university students from The University of Hong Kong who plot to assassinate a high-ranking special agent and recruiter working for the puppet government by luring him into a honey trap. The film is generally accepted to be based on the historical event of Chinese spy Zheng Pingru's failed attempt to assassinate the Japanese collaborator Ding Mocun.[5]
With this film, Lee won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival for the second time, the first being with Brokeback Mountain.[6] The film adaptation and the story are loosely based on events that took place during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. The film's sex scenes resulted in the film being rated NC-17 in the United States.[7] The film grossed $67 million worldwide over $16 million budget, making it the highest grossing NC-17 rated film of all time.[8][9]
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, a shy and inexperienced university student, Wong Chia Chi, travels from Shanghai to Hong Kong to begin studying at Lingnan University. Male student Kuang Yumin invites her to join his patriotic drama club and she soon becomes a lead actress, inspiring both her audience and her colleagues. Inspired by the club's patriotic plays, Kuang persuades the group to make a more concrete contribution to the war against Japan. He devises a plan to assassinate Mr. Yee, a special agent and recruiter of the puppet government of Wang Jingwei set up by the Japanese occupation in China. The beautiful Chia Chi is chosen to take on the undercover role of "Mrs. Mak", the elegant wife of a trading company owner. She inserts herself into the social circle of Mrs. Yee.
Chia Chi catches the eye of Mr. Yee and tries to lure him to a location where he can be assassinated. Chia Chi is still a virgin, and she reluctantly consents to having sex with another student involved in the plot in order to practice her role as a married woman. Attracted to Chia Chi, Yee nearly falls for the trap but backs out at the last minute. Soon after, Mr. and Mrs. Yee move back to Shanghai, leaving the students with no further chance to complete their mission. While they are preparing to disband, a former subordinate of Yee turns up unannounced and tells them that he is aware of their plans. After a violent struggle, the students kill the subordinate and then go into hiding.
Three years later, in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, Chia Chi again encounters Kuang, who is now an undercover agent of the Kuomintang (KMT) secret service, the Juntong, which is seeking to overthrow the Japanese occupation forces and the puppet government. Kuang enlists her into a renewed assassination plan to kill Yee, who has become head of the secret police department under the puppet government, and is responsible for torturing and executing resistance members working for the KMT. Chia Chi's advances to become Yee's mistress are reciprocated. During their first sexual encounter, Yee violently rapes Chia Chi.[10][11] Over the next few weeks, their sexual relationship becomes more consensual and affectionate, stirring conflicting emotions in Chia Chi.[12]
When Chia Chi reports to her KMT superior officer, she exhorts him to carry out the assassination soon, so that she will not have to continue her sexual liaison with Yee, but she is told that the assassination needs to be delayed for strategic reasons. Chia Chi describes the emotional conflict she finds herself embroiled in, sentimentally bound to a man whom she is plotting to help assassinate. When Yee sends Chia Chi to a jewelry store with a sealed envelope, she discovers that he has arranged for a large and extremely rare six-carat pink diamond for her, to be mounted in a ring. This provides the Chinese resistance with a chance to get at Yee when he is not accompanied by his bodyguards.
Soon after, Chia Chi invites Yee to accompany her to collect the diamond ring. While entering the jewelry shop, she notices that all those involved in the assassination plot are undercover outside. When she puts on the ring, she is overcome by emotion and quietly urges Yee to leave. Understanding her meaning, he immediately flees the shop and escapes the assassination attempt. By the end of the day, most members of the resistance group have been captured. Yee's deputy was aware of the resistance cell, but did not inform Yee because he hoped to use the opportunity to catch their leader. In emotional turmoil, Yee signs the resistance members' death warrants. Chia Chi and the others are taken to a quarry to be executed. As the resistance members group are forced to their knees at gunpoint, a sad Kuang gazes at Chia Chi. Meanwhile, Yee sits on Chia Chi's empty bed in the family guest room while his wife asks him what is going on, since his secretary and two men had taken Chia Chi's belongings and some papers from his office. Yee tells her to keep quiet and to continue playing mahjong downstairs, to avoid letting anyone know of his affection for Chia Chi.
The actors who played university classmates, spent six months of preproduction in Hong Kong just to get into character and understand the period before filming. During this period the group of actors, including Tang Wei and Wang Leehom became very close friends. Both Tang Wei and Tony Leung Chiu-wai were asked whether the sex scenes in the movie were unsimulated. Tang Wei responded, "In the movie, we are just doing what we should do to have a baby." As for Tony Leung, he responded, "When the bodies collide with each other, it is indeed like a fake show!"[13][14]
The title of the work, Lust, Caution, has a double meaning in Chinese. The character for "lust" (色, s) can be read as "colour", while "caution" (戒, ji) can be read as "ring", therefore the title can also read as "colored ring", an object that plays a pivotal role in the story. The two alternate readings of the title are interwoven into a cautionary tale of lust and love through the symbolic use of the ring.[15]
In the movie, Chia Chi's virginity is used as a symbol of both her status as an innocent woman and a barrier to the role she must play in order to prove her patriotism. Chia Chi's virginity is ultimately given as a sacrifice but consequently, her sexuality that has been awakened is used as a weapon against Mr. Yee in order to ensnare him into a relationship.[16][17]
The portrayal of female sexuality and desire in the film emphasizes the shame and awkwardness of Chia Chi's sexuality versus the role she must play as "Mrs. Mak", which serves the nation rather than her needs as a woman.[18] Sex and sexuality are used as tangible tools in proving patriotism in this film, and in each instance of Chia Chi's bodily sacrifice, she is representing the recognizable symbol of violation experienced by China as a nation while under Japanese occupation.[19]
Through each of the sex scenes, a tangible but subtle difference can be seen in Wong Chia Chi's character as she becomes more comfortable with her sexual desires; a gradual acceptance of pleasure along with a growing role of dominance in hers and Mr. Yee's relationship as compared to the submissive and easily manipulated role she fills in the group of comrades that she is plotting against the Japanese and their collaborators with.[19]
Eileen Chang's original work from which Ang is drawing from does not contain the sex scenes of the film, yet with their addition a change can be seen in the levels of participation and assertiveness from Wong Chia Chi and her own agency in them: the first sex scene focuses on the forced and unpleasant intercourse between the couple; stronger levels of consent and enjoyment from Chia Chi is found in the second sex scene; finally, Wong Chia Chi has recognized her full agency in the third sex scene and is acting with assertion by taking control of her own desires and pleasure with Mr. Yee.[19]
The music for Lust, Caution created by French composer Alexandre Michel Grard Desplat. The soundtrack, which was released by Decca Records, contains 24 songs running at approximately 60 minutes in length.[20]
In 2007, two DVD versions of Lust, Caution were released: the original NC-17 version and the censored R-rated version.[25] On March 30, 2021, Kino Lorber released the NC-17 version of the film on Blu-ray.[26]
In a number of countries, notably the People's Republic of China and India, the sex scenes had to be cut before the film could be released. In Singapore, the film's producers initially decided to release a cut version with an NC-16 rating, but a public outcry stating that the producers of the film were underestimating censorship standards in the country (the film was released uncut in Hong Kong and Taiwan) prompted them to eventually release the uncut version with an R-21 rating. The film is rated R18 and was released uncut in New Zealand.[27]
In a further example of censorship affecting the mainland China release of Lust, Caution, the line in which Chia Chi whispers "Go, go quickly" to the Japanese collaborator that she has fallen in love with in order to save him from capture and death; in the edited version, Ang Lee changes this to "Let's go" in order to redeem the lead protagonist's sabotage of the assassination attempt of Mr. Yee[29] by implicating them both in the escape rather than Chia Chi sacrificing herself and her classmates alone. This form of censorship was done in order to avoid criticism for glorifying a traitor such as Mr. Yee during a time of Japanese occupation in World War II.[29][30] Chia Chi's betrayal of her classmates and China as a nation in order to save a traitor was received by some mainland Chinese audiences with distaste, with some media websites referring to the film as an insult to China.[30]
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