Never have I been so unsure of the integrity of a director’s artistic intention than with this erotic political thriller from Brokeback Mountain’s Ang Lee. And it matters. Lee’s sensitivity and reticence with Brokeback perhaps earns him the benefit of the doubt despite a lingering doubt that to have made that film’s gay relationship more explicit would have decimated its market and earning power certainly in the US.

Sadly, no such reticence is demanded for explicit heterosexual scenes in movies. Quite the reverse; pretty much the more you show, the more you make. And one can’t help but feel that this is because of a combination of our deep cultural sexual hypocrisy and blatant gender double standards. All explicit sex scenes in mainstream movies reveal everything of the woman; every angle, every act, every external anatomical detail. While by some atavistic, arbitrary, perverse sensibility or perhaps deep-seated fear, the sight of an erect penis is held to transgress some absolute boundary of coy taste and specious morality. Quite why an aroused nipple is more acceptable than an aroused penis is an arcane mystery to match the number of angels you can get on the head of a pin. Whatever moral view one takes of pornography in general, in comparison with mainstream movie-making its sexual attitudes are clear, honest, and of the viewer at least, non-exploitative. Porn-watchers get what they pay for.

I don’t doubt Ang Lee’s sincerity but in the inevitably tortuous route to funding Lust, Caution, I guarantee the fact that extended scenes of explicit heterosexual sex were, as they truly are, an ‘integral part of the plot’, didn’t deter many investors. Whereas a similar honest approach to Brokeback Mountain would have had them out of the door so fast their profit points wouldn’t have touched the ground.

These are serious issues worth thinking about and discussing. And a legitimate part of a review of Lee’s movie. Precisely because the integrity of his artistic intention is irreducibly bound up with them. If sincere, they are precisely the deep issues he wants the film to illuminate. One last point therefore before getting on to the film. Newcomer, lead actress Wei Tang who plays these scenes opposite the superb experienced actor Tony Leung, was we are told selected from 10,000 auditioners. I shall stifle an unworthy thought about this process in itself, but it does trouble me that women, even little-known actresses, are open to exploitation in such situations. If an established actress, like Meg Ryan in In The Cut say, decides to do explicit scenes she has other possibilities open to her. She has a real choice. An ambitious unknown does not. That makes me feel uneasy as I watch this beautiful young woman’s sexuality exposed for all to see on screen. You see therefore why it is crucial what judgement one makes of Lee’s sincerity of artistic purpose?

Japanese-occupied Shanghai 1942: Mrs Mak wife of a Hong Kong businessman is part of a Mahjong-playing circle of bored wives of Chinese collaborationsts at the house of Mrs Yee whose husband is a much hated head of secret police; rooting out, torturing and killing members of the Resistance. We discover that Mrs Mak is an undercover agent, real name Wong Chia Chi (Wei Tang) having a clandestine relationship with Mr Yee to make him vulnerable to assassination. Mrs Wak takes a taxi to a restaurant and makes an obviously coded phone call designed to set up the attempt on Yee’s life. As she waits Lee flashbacks.

Shanghai 4 years earlier: Wong Chia Chi is a beautiful, charismatic member of a drama group of idealistic young students using drama to express dissent at the occupation. Led by Kuang Yu Min (Leeblom Wong) they decide to try to assassinate Mr Yee at that time a collaborationist police official in the newly occupying regime. Chia Chi is tasked to ingratiate herself into Lee’s household through his wife’s Mahjong parties in order to set up an affair with Lee that will draw him out of his tight security so the group can kill him. Chia Chi is given a legend as the well-off wife of businessman Mr Mak, frequently away on business.

Chia Chi attracts Yee’s attention and eventually the two have tense private assignations where Lee superbly conveys a sense if sexual tension between the inexperienced Chia Chi and deeply cautious Yee. Reporting her progress to her student friends it is agreed among them that Chia must lose her virginity to one of the group so that she can be credible as a lover to Yee. There is only one non-virgin male in the group, whose sole sexual experience has been with prostitutes, so with a mixture of innocent embarrassment and lustless dedication he initiates Chia Chi into sexual congress with the dispassionate almost reluctant earnestness of a male student asked to do the washing up. Beautifully played, these scenes have a sensitive un-erotic charm.

Before she can apply her new-found carnal knowledge with Yee, in a shocking unexpected twist, the students are forced to kill Yee’s chauffeur who has discovered their plot. In a powerful scene, one of many references to Ang Lee’s admiration for Hitchcock (the whole plot mirrors Hitchcock’s Notorious) the students discover as Paul Newman did in Torn Curtain how difficult it can be for an amateur actually to kill a man especially with a knife. The students are forced to abandon their plot and flee. Chia Chi escapes Shanghai to live with relatives.

Three years later she is sought out by Kuang now a member of the official Resistance. She is drawn back to Shanghai to re-establish her link with Yee, now almost invulnerable at the top of the Secret police. She is now professionally run by a seasoned member of the Resistance, Old Wu. As a very bad Mahjong player who always loses money she is welcomed back into Mrs Yee’s circle.

With an arrogance born of his unrestrained power as head of the Secret police, Yee’s earlier caution with Chia Chi is abandoned. In a series of at times explosive sexual encounters he simply takes what he wants. These scenes, intentionally I think, arouse deeply ambivalent feelings. They are at once brutal, virtual rape, and yet as shot, apparently consensually physically violent. Like two boxers who have beaten each other to pulp for 10 rounds and then collapse into each others arms at the end of the fight. Trouble is, it is easy to understand the respect of the fighters for each other, but here we are invited to accept that the infliction of pain, usually but not exclusively, unilaterally by the man, is an essential part of intimacy and sexual connection. Most of the attention and comment, as ever in our culture of weirdly distorted values, has been given to the relatively unimportant issue of how visually explicit theses scenes are. The deep issue is not how much we see, but what it means. It is the nature of the intimate relationship between a man and a woman here that disturbs. And the narrative of Chia Chi pretending to be someone she isn’t adds to the ambiguity and ambivalence. As played, Chia Chi responds sexually to Yee’s aggression and violence. That’s what we see and the truth of that understanding is confirmed precisely by the film’s tragic denouement.

These are deep and murky waters with some dangerous sexual stereotypes lurking just beneath the surface: woman as temptress, Eve, bringing about the downfall of Man; woman as sexually excited by violence and male domination; woman as sexually dishonest, able to control, fake and simulate her responses; woman as willing victim to her own degradation. And finally - woman in the end either unwilling or unable to stop herself from following her instinctual sexual responses even to the point of her own destruction.

In the end my deep problem with Lee’s film is that he raises these issues but does not in any way address them. He does in two related scenes, deal well with the sheer hypocrisy of men’s attitudes to women and their sexuality. When he first recruits her, Old Wu looks Chia Chi straight in the eyes and without flinching, gives her a suicide pill and tells her she must use it if discovered. Yet later when she tells him and Kuang, who obviously loves her, precise sexual details of Yee’s brutal, often drawing blood, lovemaking, Wu becomes angrily embarrassed and stomps off. Lie, cheat, fake, sacrifice the very essence of your self, even destroy yourself for the cause – but please spare me the sexual details. This is only too depressingly familiar as an accurate representation of certainly common, if not predominant, masculine attitudes.

But this is just not good enough. Lee’s narrative conclusion leaves these dangerous stereotypes largely confirmed not really challenged. In a totally misjudged and unnecessarily literal scene when Kuang finally says he loves her, she bemoans the fact that he did not say so earlier. There is a hint here that all of the tragic events we have just witnessed, might perhaps have been avoided if only the man she loved had told her he loved her too.

This review has been a journey for me. My conclusion? Lust,Caution is a good workmanlike political thriller, beautifully shot by Alejandro Innaritu’s brilliant cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto and superbly played, especially by the two key actors. But the hype surrounding it largely ignores the real sexual issues raised by the film in favour of infantile preoccupation with how much is shown not what it means. If you want to see these serious and disturbing sexual questions actually confronted, addressed, and explored with insight and not a little courage, I would recommend Jane Campion’s much neglected In The Cut with an extraordinary performance by Meg Ryan. Perhaps only a woman Director can credibly meet these issues head on. My problem with Ang Lee is that he didn’t try.

Zettel, I was disappointed with this film too, but not because Ang Lee took sexist male attitudes as a given. As an experienced cinema-goer, you know very well the audience for whom main-stream films are made, and to say:

Quite why an aroused nipple is more acceptable than an aroused penis is an arcane mystery to match the number of angels you can get on the head of a pin.

is a tad ingenuous. The film did not intend to address sexual issues, although it did show more graphically what many spy films with women as bait only gloss over. To that extent it showed explicitly the price the women pay.

For me it was a film of two halves and much the more interesting half depicted the students' patriotic discussions, amateur drama and equally amateur attempts at assassination. The mahjong-and-shifty-glances occasions used to access the villain were also intriguing. The sexual sadism and kama-sutra positions were no doubt titillating, but much more interesting were the street-scenes with hidden spies, the covert telephone-calls, clandestine encounters and suicide pills.

It's a same that Ang Lee decided his audience would accept a Chinese politcal drama only if laced with heavy doses of graphic sex.

Sheila

Sheila

I disagree - I DO think Lee is interested in the sexual attitudes that a spy thriller with all its ambiguities and ambivalences gives him a narrative context rich in possibilities. My problem was whether his sexist attitudes were perhaps deeper than he might think. However arrogant that sounds. Just as I think it was precisely the red-necked, macho environment of cowboys that fascinated him as a context for an exploration of masculine and homophobic attitudes. May have to look at the original book to find a bit more out abuot this.

I'm not naive about the that FACT that an aroused nipple etc. My point is that there is no rational, moral, logical, even sexual REASON for such a distinction. Other than what always seems to me a deep fear men have about this. And not just the size issue though even that is powerful enough and gave Ken Russel lots of trouble one gathers with Alan Bates and Oliver Reed on Women In Love.

There is also the reverse of the coin that is seldom talked about, the sensibility MEN attribute to WOMEN that they are shall we say, not interested in seeing such explicitness. Well 5 minutes of the average hen night, Chippendales or not, seems to knock that myth on the head so to speak.

On a thriller level Si, Jie seems to me pretty pedestrian with nlt the exotic oriental background adding anything different.

thanks for the comments

regards

Z

My problem was whether his sexist attitudes were perhaps deeper than he might think.

Ahem - well, he is a man, and it's not my impression that he's particularly non-sexist. I've seen all his films and the focus is most squarely on men and their 'problems' - apart from Sense and Sensibility where he seems to see Emma Thompson as a kind of honorary man.

He's savvy enough - or his business partner is -to know that women as victims are big box office, but most of his films (as with other male directors) have been about men, in particular about their relationships with their fathers, with each other and with society rather than with women. I would say there's a huge element of this in Brokeback Mounain, too - concern with the man's status in society colouring his emotional relationship - one could say that's a major, if not the main, focus of the film . Earlier films like The Wedding Banquet and Ride with the Devil are clear examples, although you can also see it in

Hulk

, too.

His values are deeply 'traditional'(i.e. sexist) which is not to say he's not also a great director.

Other than what always seems to me a deep fear men have about this.

That's not really an 'other than' - it's the main reason.

There's no point trying to apply reason anyway - go figure footbinding for an odd male whim. No, don't - it's too obvious.

Yes, I agree about the Chippendales - when I was a young teacher one of my female colleagues suggested we see male strippers at Raymond's Review bar and it was a great night out.

Perhaps studying Chinese history informed my feelings about the political drama so I did find it interesting/suspenseful. In that area too Ang Lee, whose father fled the mainland for Taiwan,is somewhat of an outsider. Maybe he made a worse stab at representing pre-liberation Shanghai than he did of portraying Jane Austen's England. The latest TV adaptation seems very thin in comparison.


In a sense Ang Lee's presentation of the female spy in Lust,Caution was ground-breaking in that he showed the mechanics of what it meant to be a mata-hari figure at that time - the fact that her virginity had to be dealt with, for instance, and that the enemy to be seduced might turn out to be a sexual sadist instead of a James Bond style charmer.


Sheila

<Added>

I did read the original Brokeback Mountain text -it's really a long short story- and noticed that the visit to the parents after the death was an add-on feature in the film. You may remember that the father had rejected the dead son because of his homosexuality. To my mind this reflected Ang Lee's pre-occupations with (deeply sexist) Confucian beliefs which emphasise relationships between men.

Sheila

I agree with much of what you say too. But if I was as dismissive about women as you sometimes are about men I rather think you'd take me to task about it. I'm wary of making generalisations about women and will even accept to a degree that they are more justified about men. But...... we're not all dumbstick-led oafs whose every motivation is as transparent as the football results. Nearly all male attitudes even those regarding sex surely are partly at least informed or generated by the kind of responses they have experienced from women?

regards

Z

Really interesting review, Zettel and I want to watch this film now even if you found it disappointing. The fact you had so much to say about it implies that it is grappling with these ambiguities - whether it answers them or not. I'll let you know when I see it.

Just to say though that The Ice Storm wasn't all focussed on the men's story and experience. And I don't see how Lee treats Emma Thompson as honorary man either.

Thanks SB

I've always found Lee a perpelexing director. But usually interesting. Why he even got involved in a project like 'Hulk' defeats me. There is no shortage of directors who are craftsmen and Lee is certainly that. Plus I doubt whether even I could make a visually uninteresting film with the extraordinary Rodrigo Prieto at the camera.

I suppose part of my interest in reviewing is to try to tease out broader issues when they seem relevant and that takes extra space - as my review of Charlie Wilson's War shows. I felt Lee's film, especially taken with the general critical reaction to it, highlighted our coyness and hypocrisy about sex in art which I guess simply mirrors those attitudes in society - as you'd expect. Take out the sex scenes and I think Si, Jie would have been a little foreign art-house movie attracting little attention. And none the worse for that. But there are several Eastern Directors who appear to be struggling to maintain the special quality of their films when transposed to Western contexts or supported by Western money. e.g. Yi-mou Zhang, wonderfully austere in Hero, veered towards western Kung Fu pandering with House of The Flying Daggers.

The directorial style, and most especially acting style of Si, Jie is certainly very western and can introduce a false note. For example when Chia Chi plays 'seductive' to Mr Yee late in the film, she looks very uncomfortable - actress and character. Yet why would the actual character be emulating a Western seductress to a man so manifestly Chinese in his attitudes and sentiments?

No more. I'll bore you to death. I hope you enjoy the film. Because of my interest in certain aspects I probably underplayed how much pleasure the film gave me too. And Sheila is right, the historical context adds a really unusual visual feel to the movie.

regards

Z

I was trying to make the point that Lust, Caution is continous with Ang Lee's interest in men's issues.

In the past I'd studied Ang Lee's work when teaching Taiwanese films and thought he was an excellent director. Last year I returned to the films for a post-graduate BFI course, and saw all of them again, apart from Pushing Hands, Ang's first successful feature film, about a young man's inspiration by his kung fu teacher. His first three films, Pushing Hands, Man, Woman, Food, Drink and The Wedding Banquet are known as the 'Father Trilogy ' for obvious reasons. Women do appear in them, of course, and they take up a fair portion of screen time, especially in Man, etc, but the central dilemma revolves around the father. Ang Lee is quite open about the complex relationship he had with his own father and says his films are in fact an attempt to make up to him for failing at an academic career. Filial obedience is of paramount importance in Chinese families and he stresses his traditional upbringing.

It is part of his development as a globally-successful director that he has widened his scope to include women in his films, but they remain peripheral to the issues that interest him.

The Ice Storm, a very satisfying and complex film, and one of my favourites, when analysed carefully, is about chaos resulting from loss of paternal authority. Political meltdown in the defeat of the Presidency ( Nixon, most famously imaged in the mask worn by the deceitful daughter, brilliantly played by Christina Ricci)was mirrored by the breakdown of family values. The defining image at the end of the film is of the father (Kevin Klein) walking through the storm carrying the boy who was electrocuted. The loss of the boy is a catalyst in reconciling relationships in the two families. I would respectfully suggest that a film which shows that order is maintained by the redemption of the father (Kevin Kline, like the President, had previously shown behaviour unbecoming) is really one in which men's issues are the focus.


I expressed an opinion about Lust Caution because the director's intergrity was questioned. I admire the director enough to have chosen to spend hours reading about and re-watching the films. I think Lust Caution is part of a progression in Ang Lee's consistent focus on men's issues, albeit that women do appear in his films. In this one, the woman is central to the plot and we see much of the action through her eyes. However, it is worth considering the plot as clue to the author's intended meaning. The Tony Leung character is drawn into a sexual relationship, his death intended as he outcome.I won't say too much about the outcome because you haven't seen the film. The girl's suffering and sacrificies for patriotic reasons are not the main issue, although they are a given of the story. The bodily display is arguably gratuitous and that's where I'd see, if anywhere, a loss of integrity. In all the main scenes the decisions and actions are taken by men. This is the norm in films, as you must have noticed. Most films don't even have any women in them, except peripherally or to show how stupid/what bitches they are.

What I meant about Sense and Sensibility is that Eleanor is the one with the cool eye and ability to stand back from the overall picture although inevitably drawn in emotionally. A bit like Tony Leung in Lust, Caution.

I think the discussion should be kept to a less personal level. To say, in effect, 'I'm right, and furthermore you don't like men anyway' doesn't really further the argument. It's too simplistic and not true.

Sheila

Sheila

I agree about keeping things non-personal but when you make patronising categoric generalised statements about men and their motivation as if you have some kind of hot-line to the truth, you must expect me to respond to that as indeed I would expect you to were I to do the same about women.

Thanks for the insights about Ang Lee's work, your deeper study and direct experience of the culture offers insights I have found useful and could not be open to me otherwise. However philosophically as I have made clear in many reviews poems and threads, I do not believe it is possible to make any kind of sense of mens' and womens' behaviour, sexual or otherwise, in isolation from one another. All the issues are irreducibly relational. After all the biggest ambiguity in Si,Jie surely is quite what we are to make of Chia Chi's apparently deep genuine sexual reponse to Yee's brutal lovemaking. Also we must address the fact that the most powerful influence on all men throughout their childhood is their mother. We have to bring arguments to bear to change machocentric cultures not accept them as given I think. And to do that the many immensely brave women around the world presently challenging these sexist repressive belief systems will, as they always have in history, need the good will of good men to add their voice in support.

We may not be on the same wavelength here anyway as I hated The Ice Storm and could never understand its critical acclaim. But as I am way in the minority there I have to accept that perhaps I got that one 'wrong'. whatever that quite means.

regards

Z


<Added>

My sole doubt about Lee's integrity is precisely to do with his treatment of the sexuality - none of the rest. As far as I am concerned, if the sex is gratuitous to add to the box office then he has no integrity in this respect. I am reluctant to think that so I must as a consequence assume that it is there for a genuine artistic purpose, which is precisely why I have drawn so much attention to it and believe he is open to criticism, artistic and moral about it.

Z

patronising categoric generalised statements

If you give me an example I can either defend it or thank you for having pointed out my error.

You wouldn't like it if I said I objected to your self-deceiving platitudes.

as if you have some kind of hot-line to the truth,

Did I make this claim? No. I did say I had studied film, and I do believe have as much right as anyone to express an opinion. I tend to back up my opinions with evidence, yes, because that's how I was trained. I don't think film criticism should boil down to 'I liked that' or 'I hated that' without giving any reasons or just saying perhaps you 'got it wrong', which doesn't make sense when it comes to film criticism. It's not mathematics.

I do not believe it is possible to make any kind of sense of mens' and womens' behaviour, sexual or otherwise, in isolation from one another.

Is this an obscure way of saying a woman in a short skirt is asking to be raped?

I think that's more or less the standard message since Eve was blamed for the Fall. As for the premise that women enjoy or invite abuse, sexual or otherwise, it's a sine-qua-non of cinema back to Emanuelle and beyond, so it shouldn't be a surprise if it features in Lust, Caution. It's not something most women believe or approve of, but perhaps that's too generalised a statement for you.

The day's quote in my diary :

Sometimes I think if there was a third sex men wouldn't get so much as a glance from me. (Amanda Vail)

makes me think I'm not quite alone in thinking men aren't the embodiment of all that's kind and wise, despite your claims to the contrary.

Sheila

Sheila

I don’t think we should prolong this. I have no hostility towards you – how could I? -I don’t know you. And we risk boring everyone to death. But you ask for examples.

There is a good one in your most recent post. You say:

You wouldn't like it if I said I objected to your self-deceiving platitudes.

That doesn’t just make the judgement that I write platitudes – which you are entitled to claim; it makes a judgement that I intentionally deceive myself about them – which you aren’t. Not as an assertion anyway. And putting them in the conditional tense is just a subtle way of saying it without saying it. You even tell me tell me how I would feel about you saying it. That’s conducting both sides of the conversation yourself.

I said:

My problem was whether his sexist attitudes were perhaps deeper than he might think.

You replied

Ahem – well he is a man.

Of the ‘size’ issue I said:

Other than what always seems to me a deep fear men have about this

You replied:

That's not really an 'other than' - it's the main reason.

What are those remarks other than a patronising sexist assumption that all men are the same; that you know simply because you are a woman what they think and feel; and that these are predictably always the same and usually it seems hostile or insensitive to or about women?

You will search in vain for a single disrespectful remark about women in this or any other of my reviews. Most of my arguments, though evidenced, are tentative because I regard these as difficult issues needing careful thought, not stereotypical responses.

I won’t dignify this with a comment:

Me:

I do not believe it is possible to make any kind of sense of mens' and womens' behaviour, sexual or otherwise, in isolation from one another.

You:

Is this an obscure way of saying a woman in a short skirt is asking to be raped?

As for:

Sometimes I think if there was a third sex men wouldn't get so much as a glance from me. (Amanda Vail)

makes me think I'm not quite alone in thinking men aren't the embodiment of all that's kind and wise, despite your claims to the contrary.

The misdandry is palpable. And there is nothing in this or any other work of mine to suggest I think or believe this. It’s just a straw-man argument put up for you knock down.

If you want to respond to this I suggest you do it by WW e.mail to spare other members the tedium of what has become an unproductive discussion.

Z

I'd much rather discuss the films, which is what I intended before you started on the insults. I'm not going to be bullied and browbeaten into silence, so don't accuse me of taking up positions and then suddenly worry about people being bored when I respond.

Just because you wrap up meanings in convoluted phrases and vague expressions doesn't mean to say that your dinosaur opinions are hidden, no matter what you might think.

In future I'll just ignore your reviews, as you can't stand any disagreement, especially from females, and I suggest you pay me the same courtesy.

Sheila

certainly - but you started the insults not I. you just didn't notice you were being insulting.

z