Lust, Caution movie review & film summary (2007)
The underlying plot gradually reveals itself. Too gradually, some will believe, unless the languor is necessary to create the hothouse atmosphere that survives in the midst of war. The Mah-Jongg game is taking place in the home of Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), whose wife (Joan Chen) is the hostess. Since coming from Shanghai, he has moved up in the collaborationist government, handles interrogations and tortures, and is repaid by status and access to such restricted items as nylon stockings, cigarettes, even diamonds. When Mr. Yee comes home in the middle of the game, he exchanges a significant look with Mrs. Mak (Tang Wei), who first joined the circle in Shanghai.
It's clear to us there's something secret and intimate between them. But who is this wealthy Mrs. Mak, who travels in a chauffeured car but whose husband is always away on business? The flashback reveals her as Wong Chia Chi, a young student who on summer vacation falls in with a group of radical Chinese patriots and takes a key role in their hope of assassinating one of the Chinese who are working with the Japanese. Her assignment: become Mr. Yee's lover.
This she did in Shanghai, but the war separated them before she was able to bring about an opportunity for Yee's murder (she is not expected to do it herself). A natural actress, she took easily to the roles of lover and rich woman. But she had some difficulty in sacrificing her virginity, which was necessary for her to play a married woman convincingly.
We do not see Mr. Yee at work, torturing his countrymen, but Leung is able to project the man's capability for menace and begins to do that in bed with her. Then commence the scenes that earned the film its NC-17 rating. They are not specifically hard core in detail, but involve so many arcane and athletic sexual positions that the MPAA's injunction against the depiction of "thrusting" is left with their clothes on the floor.
When their sex drifts steadily into S&M, the nature of their relationship shifts. It is impossible to say that Wong Chia Chi/Mrs. Mak likes his tastes in pain and bondage, but they create a fearful intimacy that, for both of them, transcends their lives apart. And it is that tension, between private fascination and public danger, that gives the movie its purpose.
