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Sadly Over-hyped

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Film Review: "Lust, Caution" (2007)This Venice Film Festival in its 64th Edition anticipating Erotic Thriller directed by Ang Lee as follow-up to Academy Award Winning picture "Brokeback Mountain" for Best Director and further revealing an understatement version versus Paul Verhoeven's effect-driven "Basic Instict" (1992) delivers additional suspense and visualized tensions between the precisely prepared cast members led by Chinese movie star Tony Leung as Mr. Yee, a governmental influenced decision maker in an war-occupied China of year 1942 and actress Wei Tang, who together deliver an honest look on how NC-17 rated motion picture entertainment looks like for an U.S. domestic market with a three explicitly infused scenes of sexual intercourse between encounters from oral, anal to vaginal sex practices in an skillfully captured use of sound design and camera motions in fields of vertical and horizontal planes by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who serves his director well in stark lighting to strong separated color themes of blue, green and black to find the story about revolting students in pre-world-war-2 China 1938 infiltrate governmental agencies over years to come without shying away even from murder to self-prostitution in order to liberate the people of their country from a Japanese stranglehold, which so beautifully finds its cinematic visualization under Ang Lee's direction in the relationship between the high-sparking chemistry of the two leading cast members.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

This Chinese movie is a visually stunning drama that convinces with two extremely talented main actors that incarnate two credible and fascinating characters. On one side, you have the charming, naive and shy student Wong Chia Chi who gets coincidentally involved into the resistance movement against Japanese occupation and the Chinese puppet government in Hong Kong back in 1938. She gets introduced to the social circle of Mister Yee's wife in order to approach, then seduce and ultimately trap him. The special agent and recruiter of the puppet government is brutal towards his enemies, emotionally cold and very experienced.Wong Chia Chi becomes Misses Mai and is able to seduce her target but when the resistance movement is ready to get the enemy killed, he moves to Shanghai with his family. The group's plans get discovered and result in a twisted crime after which the organization falls apart and disappears. Four years later, Wong Chia Chi also moves to Shanghai for studies and lives a solitary live in depression and poverty, abandoned by her father and her friends. She meets one of her old partners again who introduces her to an egoistic, pitiless and vengeful undercover agent of the Kuomintang who wants to finish what had begun four years ago. Wong Chia Chi takes the identity of Misses Mai again and soon meets her target on a regular basis. They start to have a relationship that is quite brutal, cold and physical in the beginning but the two solitary souls soon start to develop true emotions towards each other. As the resistance starts to concretely organize the assassination of the target, the matured young woman has to decide which path to choose.The story of this movie is intriguing thanks to a very strong acting and a progressive character development. The film features brutal and cold sex scenes close to a rape but these scenes ultimately get more and more aesthetic and passionate. This radical contrast perfectly portrays both characters and the essence of the movie. In many movies, sex scenes are not very well acted and remain superficial but these ones really make sense, incarnate a certain spirit and feel extremely real as if the two actors were truly in a relationship which is though not the case.The movie is quite slow paced in the beginning and takes some time to kick off which might be difficult for some people but at the same time, this flick gives us a credible portrait of the difficult life during the Second Sino-Japanese War. As it's often the case for contemporary Chinese movies, a lot of budget went into the beautiful costumes, the authentic decorations and the detailed locations. All these elements drown the viewer into a very credible past world and develop a great atmosphere.In the end, any fan of contemporary Chinese movies should check this solid production out. Be sure to view the almost flawless uncensored version that is much more authentic, complex and dynamic than the shortened one.

Having been a sincere fan of Taiwanese super-director Ang Lee since his superb 'The Ice Storm', I have seen him bravely move from one contentious subject, to another, usually with incredible aplomb.After sweeping the boards with awards for his English language and rightly popular 'Brokeback Mountain', he definitely doesn't rest on his laurels and did not re-make some other short story to the same successful recipe.Only a very brave or suicidal director would come up with a two-and-a- half hour, slow moving war-time epic set in Shanghai, as the follow-up. Listed under both Erotic and Period as well as drama and foreign language, these are not the genres that anyone wanting to make a quick buck would sanely go for. However, whilst stately and often beautiful, it is not one that I sit too happily with and I've just watched my DVD of it for the second time.The story is fairly complex and the first hour is spent setting up the remaining 90 mins. The leads, though are spell-bindingly hypnotic, especially in the often poetic and fluid direction. The music, too, for me, plays a big part, eking out and complimenting the emotions and feeling of the scenes.The erotic tag is justified, though if anyone thinks that it's wall-to- wall sex scenes WILL be disappointed - and wait an awfully long time for when they do. Despite their relative candidness, they are strangely beautiful and Lee has coaxed out that rare thing - intimacy with feeling - in the throws of passion it is possible to see just what each partner is getting from the sex, just from the expression in their eyes: quality stuff. Unfortunately, the sexual violence that precedes all this is difficult to watch and is one of the main reasons why I cannot wholly enjoy, or recommend this film. A pity.Is this a mis-judgement on Ang Lee's part? Possibly not and many do think it a great film of high merit. Having said that, we all have our no-go areas and at the end of the day, no amount of brilliance can wholly redeem a film, or indeed, anything which crosses those boundaries.

I have seen some comments that say this is a very Asian film and wonder what exactly that means? It could equally be very French, particularly the older man with younger lover aspect and the absolute perve-fest of soft-lit slo-mo romps through the sexual positions, seemingly to my mind stuck into the movie like an intermission (ha ha). These scenes are a right turn-off for me and just don't sit with the rest of the movie. Ang Lee auditioned thousands of girls and spent eleven days on a closed set for his 'love' scenes. This is sounding a bit mid-life crisis territory to me. Why didn't he (the director) just stick these on as extras on the CD and let the rest of the movie take it's course? Th remainder is quite watchable and some nice work has gone into the costume and cinematography. Not up to his usual standard though.