More on Lust, Caution.

In the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Kimberly Chun focuses on a scene in which Tony Leung's gaze "threatens to tear through the multiple fictions and revolutionary frictions propelling Lust, Caution," a film that "bends over backward, as if assuming a new, gymnastic sexual position, to find the misguided, miscommunicated affection - for country, for enemy - between lust and caution, only to tumble into the abyss."

"If [Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon] was [Ang] Lee's updating/reworking of the martial arts films of his youth, Lust, Caution serves an analogous function for Chinese cinema's wartime romantic melodrama," writes Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat. "There is not a single moment to fault: the whole is beautifully mounted, acted and directed. But not everyone is likely to fall under its romantic spell."

For Andrew Sarris, writing in the New York Observer, the "envelope-pushing expressions of carnal passion" in Lee's latest are "very astutely character-revealing in a manner consistent with the horribly brutal and treacherous period in world history with which Lust, Caution is profoundly involved in both its literary and cinematic forms."

"Frankly, I haven't been all that enthusiastic about this one, since I'm almost always lukewarm about Lee's decorous direction and his almost self-consciously tangential relationships to the stories and genres he tackles from film to film," writes Nick Davis. "One of the distinguishing marks of Lust, Caution, though, is that it turns so many of its potential vices and pitfalls into virtues."

"Like most of Lee's films (Brokeback Mountain, Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm), Lust, Caution is impeccably crafted," writes the Oregonian's Shawn Levy. "Rodrigo Prieto's lovely cinematography, Alexandre Desplat's tastefully romantic score, and the gorgeous costumes and decor all delight. But there's a chilliness to the enterprise, and a remoteness, and all the sweaty intensity of the sex scenes can't heat it up or bring us closer to these characters. The film is never less than beautiful, but it's never truly absorbing."

"This handsomely-mounted period espionage drama (set in wartime Shanghai, with the emphasis on the 'drama' rather than the 'espionage') has all the virtues - and, of course, the limitations - of Ang Lee's cinema: solid and slightly old-fashioned virtues of an attention to story and character and a clean and functional narrative style," writes Ian Johnston at Not Coming to a Theater Near You.

"A brooding meditation on the unnerving power and terrible cost of emotional and political masquerades, the Chinese-language Lust, Caution gets under your skin with its examination of what qualifies as love and what does not," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times.

Annie Wagner talks with Lee for the Stranger.

Online listening tip. Scott Simon talks with Lee for NPR.

Posted by dwhudson at October 6, 2007 12:44 PM