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Lust, Caution Movie Review

Lust, Caution is a 2007 Chinese Taiwanese spy period film directed by Ang Lee and starring Tony Leung and Tang Wai. It’s a pretty intense, but overly slow movie.

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“The people I associate with are those with high reputations“

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A young woman gets swept up in a dangerous game of emotional intrigue with a powerful political figure, Mr. Yee. First and foremost, I have to of course comment on the intensity of the sex scenes in this feature that led to China censoring those scenes. These two engage in so many different sex positions and even some BDSM that I was genuinely shocked that Lee could make such a movie.

Honestly, those scenes were the best parts of the film that is otherwise too slow and overlong. The dynamic between the two is fascinating, intense and complicated while being rooted in politics that was also complex. Everything about it I loved and I wish the rest of the film was as strong.

But the runtime of two and a half hours was just too much for this story that did not need to be that long. In fact, the first act is so slow that I was really bored and I lost all interest in the movie pretty quickly. I get that Lee wanted to introduce us to this world and its characters fully, but there was no need for such a slow, extensive introduction. It was padding and simply dull.

But thankfully the second half of the film got quite engaging as the pace became brisker. I loved the ending and the film’s technical aspects are also terrific, especially the cinematography and the production design. Lee’s directing is reliably strong here, though this is far from his best works.

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Lust, Caution is best seen for the two central performances. Tang Wai was so amazing here that I instantly would like to see more of her roles as I was not acquainted with her before. Obviously Tony Leung was incredible here and this was by far his most risqué role that led to him being banned from getting more roles in China in the next couple of years. The physicality of his performance was fantastic.