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Lust, Caution is a movie by Ang Lee and is based on an Eileen Chang short story. If you have not seen the movie yet I can recommend that you rent it and enjoy this masterpiece with a friend (or a lover- but definitely not with a parent!). You will not regret!
Director: Ang Lee
Producer: Ang Lee, James Schamus, Bill Kong
Cast: Tony Leung, Tang Wei, Joan Chen, Wang Leehom
Genre(s): Thrillers, Drama, Romance
Country: China, Taiwan, USA
Duration: 157 mins
Release: March 2008

The movie depicts a small resistance groups attempt to kill the collaborationist police chief, Yee Tai Tai (Tony Leung), during the Japanese-occupied China in the Second World War. The setting is alternately in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The main character Wong Chai Chi (Tang Wei) is an innocent young college student who is left behind in Shanghai when her father flees to England. With another group of college students she moves to Hong Kong, hoping that the British will protect them there. There she joins a theatre troupe performing patriot plays. After a lot of success, their leader Kuang (Wang Leehom) comes with a suggestion that should benefit their country in a more effective way. They should use their acting skills to set up the hated Mr. Yee and assassinate him. Soon Wong Chai Chi becomes a devoted spy who’s mission is to seduce Mr. Yee, pretending she is a high-class wife who plays mahjong with his wife every week. She works under the name Mak Tai Tai the bored bourgeois housewife of a business man. The resistance group’s naive and amateurish attempts, that in the beginning is all about costumes and theatrical acts, soon turns into a deadly mission. But the mission ends up in a bloody chaos when Wong starts an affair with Mr. Yee.
Ang Lee is a man of very few words. He lets the images talk for themselves. The facial expressions of the actors are in focus, and they reveal the characters’ thoughts and feelings so well that there is no need for words. The movie does not contain many dialogues but is based on beautiful and detailed images. Ang Lee has with his brilliant cast created a beautiful and trilling movie about loyalty, betrayal and sex during the Japanese-occupation of China. Besides the rising of the resistance group and the love affair between Yee and Wong, the movie describes the Chinese society before and during the Second World War.
The sex scenes with Mr. Yee and Wong are an important part of the story and the impression of the characters. The anxiety and frustration that the war provokes in the minds of Yee and Wong, and the obsessing fear of getting caught in their act of lust, are expressed through their passionate and savage sex. Their act of love seems to be more like an act of seduction, power and pain. Suddenly there is more involved than just secrets and sex in their affair. There arises much more complex feelings that becomes impossible to ignore and depress; therefore their affair developed into mutual deep affection. This complicates the situation and influences the crucial decisions that are made in the movie. With the movie Lust, Caution the audience witnesses how love influences and settles wars. The urge of human beings becomes an inevitable factor of the course of wars.