lust & love

If you like Ang Lee 李安, please go see "Lust, Caution."
If you like Eileen Chiang 張愛玲, please go see "Lust, Caution."
If you like Tony Leung 梁朝偉, please go see "Lust, Caution."
If you like the era of chipao 旗袍, please go see "Lust, Caution."
If you've seen "Lust, Caution.", please read the interview of Ang Lee on CNN.

The tagline running in Taiwan for the film is "Lust is easy to reject. Love is hard to avoid." 色易守, 情難防
24 hours after seeing the film, I finally totally agree on the amount of sex pictured in the film. I had argued that the first two sex scenes were necessary but doubted the rest. Now I feel the rest was also necessary for the whole tension development in the story.

Lust, Caution is not as easily understandable, romantic, or agreeable as another film -- Red Rose and White Rose that was also adapted from one of Eileen Chang's novels.
(Joan Chen played a important role in both film, actually.) Chang was a superb writer in describing women's mental world. Red Rose and White Rose was one of the great examples.
On the other hand, Lust Caution has never been recognized well or accepted widely by Chang's fans. Perhaps it is because of the taboo of explicit expression of sex and desire in women. Perhaps it is actually because tension within a highly secret relationship, rather than women in a secret relationship, is highly focused in the story.

Lust and love can be separated, of course. Practically it may not be the case for everyone. But it happens. And quite often. People do have sex without a passion called love. Some people are lucky (or unlucky?) that they make love out of sex.
That's why sex is risky. You can never be sure whether it will change something in you or whether that change is good for your current status.
And they, the two people in the film, eventually could not help but fall deeply and painfully in love.
I felt pain when seeing Mr. Yee's face or great actor Tony Leung's acting at the end.
It reminded me of the last appearance of Maggie Cheung 張曼玉 in In the Mood for Love 花樣年華. So heartbreaking. So so so heartbreakingly painful.

I have to say, Lust Caution is a disturbingly great film. Because it successfully disturbed me, it is great.