Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

Posted: **Sun Oct 28, 2007 2:04 pm**

I guess I have a different take. This was actually one of the first NC-17 (or unrated) films I've seen where my reaction wasn't "why isn't this R?" but "yep, this DEFINITELY should be NC-17."

Quite honestly, I think the class, pedigree, and quality of this picture could actually help push the NC-17 rating more into the mainstream, and make it a more viable classification in the coming years.

Posted: **Sun Oct 28, 2007 12:03 pm**

Now that I'm thinking about it, I guess NC-17 makes sense due to its "adult" content. If the ratings system has children in mind, then a film like "Lust, Caution" is a thoroughly grown-up move that the young ones probably couldn't process, whereas blood-and-guts movies like Hostel are perhaps just as inappropriate but are juvenile enough for those under 17 to "get into."

I'm realizing how very "grown up" this movie felt, which I havent seen in quite some time, at least not since watching a beautifully nuanced and subtle movie like "The Lives of Others."

Perhaps the ratings system does know what it's doing!

I still think the sex scenes were not that extreme to warrant higher than an R rating. And because of the NC-17, this could cut into the number of audience members who would go see it, which is unfortunate.

Posted: **Sun Oct 28, 2007 7:36 am**

It's not the rating system. It's the stodgy conservatives deciding the ratings that make it what it is. Their puritanical views of what's appropriate for children to see when accompanied by adults is why they choose sexual scenes to give NC-17 ratings to and blood-and-guts to get R ratings. It's the opposite in Europe and the rest of the world would probably rate both equally, edit them or ban them altogether.

Posted: **Sun Oct 28, 2007 2:29 am**

And Anon is right that this movie didn't deserve an NC-17 rating--not only is it crazy that the Hostel and Saw movies get R ratings, but I've seen movies just as explicit as this get R ratings. Totally crazy.

I was having this exact conversation recently with someone just the other day. Completely agree that the ratings system is terrible.

Posted: **Sat Oct 27, 2007 11:31 pm**

I fully agree with the opinion that Tang Wei was magnficent and fully deserving of a Best Actress nomination--though I'm more dubious that it could actually happen.

And Anon is right that this movie didn't deserve an NC-17 rating--not only is it crazy that the Hostel and Saw movies get R ratings, but I've seen movies just as explicit as this get R ratings. Totally crazy.

And, yes, the first part was stronger than the second part; and the movie, unfortunately, goes about 10 minutes longer than it should have--a key moment near the end would've made for a wonderful fade out--as it is, the coda is too literal, too "informative," so it's less effective.

Posted: **Sat Oct 27, 2007 9:37 pm**

Sabin wrote:Tang Wei is wonderful and should be nominated for Best Actress. Tony Leung is quite good as well, though not at heartbreaking as in 'In the Mood for Love', but as stately and commanding as always. It should garner nominations all across the board, just nothing above the line. The film is so powerful and beautiful for much of the duration, but it loses its narrative drive in the second act and third act, neither which are terribly well-defined. A shame, but such a meticulously directed, beautifully crafted shame.

Hi everyone! Just checking back in on this board, now that Oscar contenders are coming to theaters, and my first prediction is Tang Wei getting nominated for Best Actress. She was simply phenomenal in this movie! I was really taken in with every single gesture and eye movement, but by the time she opens her mouth to sing ...she is hands down my favorite this year!

As for the NC-17 rating, ???

As far as I'm concerned, the sex scenes made this movie that much more intense and were absolutely necessary for building up the tension and the whole interplay between "Lust" and "Caution." Utterly ridiculous that this should be rated NC-17 when movies like Hostel are rated R. Absolutely demented, when you think about it.

Yes, the movie dragged in parts, but the acting and direction made this film work. Ang Lee may not quite be on Wong Kar Wai's level, but he's getting there!

Posted: **Sat Oct 20, 2007 12:59 pm**

For the first hour or so, I was convinced that I was watching perhaps Ang Lee's best movie. With Graham Greene-ish echoes, this Shanghai espionage thriller takes off immediately with a game of majhonng as riveting as anything I saw last summer, his command of actor's as strong as I've ever seen matched by Rodrigo Prieto's lush cinematography. It became apparent that Lee intended on really using Prieto to visually choreograph this film as he never did with 'Brokeback Mountain'. We have the NOW (with Tang Wei waiting in a café for his prey), and we have the THEN (with a theater troup during the war with Japan as young artists-turned-revolutionaries) as it gradually turns into the NOW. The THEN is beautiful. Scene-for-scene, it's fantastic as Tang Wei infiltrates elitist majhongg-obsessed regime and seduces and is seduced by Tong Leung's Mr. Yee (and his visible testicles). Here's one for the Syd Field fans out there: will this result in a) loss of identity, b) genuine emotion from both parties, c) the last-ditch spurned advances of the enabling artist who put her up to this, d) zex und zex und zex und zex, or e) all of the above? Everybody drop your tabs! Between the NOW as how the THEN works its way back into the NOW, this is classic oldie-but-goodie stuff.

As a whole, the THEN (as lush, sexy, well-acted, and intriguing as it is) feel like it takes FOR-GODDAMN-EVER?! Oh my goodness, why did *this* movie have to feel like such a bore? I'm going through a lengthy editing process with my editor and due to our different opinions, it's become a frustration; needless to say, when editing the film becomes something else, sometimes for better or worse, but one needs to keep in mind the essence of what one wants to originally put out there as well as the freedom to let go of the unworkable. In 'Lust, Caution' (with 'Brokeback Mountain' so recently behind him), Ang Lee is unwilling to let go. I have no doubt that in years to come, he will reveal that this film is his favorite. In fact, it should have been his best movie once at least 15 minutes were cut. And they could be done very easily. There is a big problem with 'Lust, Caution': for all its beauty, is it trying to be a desperate sexual prison for these characters or a tense dungeon of repression? The sex winds them up then keeps them wound, and then we wait for the next visibly joyless encounter. There are scenes that last twice as long as necessary seemingly out of their own volition, and we wait and wait, we see sexual aerobics that speak more volumes than anything said in the film (and thankfully, there is little said in the film at all) about sexuality keeping people close and far at th esame time.

Tang Wei is wonderful and should be nominated for Best Actress. Tony Leung is quite good as well, though not at heartbreaking as in 'In the Mood for Love', but as stately and commanding as always. It should garner nominations all across the board, just nothing above the line. The film is so powerful and beautiful for much of the duration, but it loses its narrative drive in the second act and third act, neither which are terribly well-defined. A shame, but such a meticulously directed, beautifully crafted shame.

Posted: **Thu Aug 30, 2007 4:26 pm**

Uh-oh.

Lust, Caution
Se, Jie (Hong Kong-U.S.-China)
By DEREK ELLEY
Variety

Too much caution and too little lust squeeze much of the dramatic juice out of Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution," a 2½--hour period drama that's a long haul for relatively few returns. Adapted from a short story by the late Eileen Chang, tale of a patriotic student -- who's willing bait in a plot to assassinate a high-up Chinese collaborator in Japanese-held WWII Shanghai -- is an immaculately played but largely bloodless melodrama which takes an hour-and-a-half to even start revving up its motor. A handful of explicit sex scenes (in the final act) have earned pic an NC-17 rating in the U.S., where it goes out in limited release Sept. 28. But beyond the notoriety of a Chinese-language picture with full-frontal female nudity, pic lacks the deep-churning emotional currents that drove Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" and his best other works. B.O. in the West looks to be modest, once the initial ballyhoo has died down.

Story opens in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in 1942, at the home of Yee (Hong Kong's Tony Leung Chiu-wai), head of the secret service of the collaborationist Chinese government, and his wife (Joan Chen). One of Mrs. Yee's mahjong partners, swapping gossip over the tiles, is the much younger Mrs. Mak (Tang Wei), the half-Cantonese, half-Shanghainese wife of a businessman who was recently in Hong Kong.

As Yee returns from work and passes by the mahjong table, it's clear there's something between him and Mak, though neither one lets their façade slip. Later, Mak makes a coded phone call to Kuang Yumin (U.S.-born pop star Wang Leehom), who says "the operation can start."

After this lengthy 15-minute intro, largely occupied by idle chatter around the mahjong table, the film flashes back four years to Hong Kong to show who Mak really is: Wang Jiazhi, a first-year university student whose family fled Hong Kong for the U.K. Through her friend Lai (Chu Tsz-ying), Wang falls in with a patriotic, anti-Japanese group that is mounting a play to fund their activities.

Leader of the group is the passionate Kuang, who hears that Yee, a high-ranking collaborator with the Japanese, is in Hong Kong on a recruitment mission. Kuang hatches a plan in which Wang plays the fictional Mrs. Mak and insinuates herself into Mrs. Yee's confidence. But Mrs. Yee's cool, wily husband, though attracted to Wang, slips through the net.

Cut to Shanghai, 1941 -- a year before the opening timeframe -- and it's round two between Yee and Wang. After Wang is rehired by the resistance to continue her Mrs. Mak role, this time their liaison is far more full-on, and as lust raises its sometimes violent head, it looks as if caution may be thrown to the wind by one or both parties.

Both Leung and newcomer Tang -- whose characters are far more charismatic and attractive than in Chang's original short story -- do strike some sparks, especially in the sex scenes, which are very bold by Chinese standards. (A tamer version will reportedly be released in mainland China.) But for most of the film, the two dance around each other in conversations that don't have much electricity or sense of repressed passion -- and vitally, no sense of the real danger that Wang is courting in the game of cat-and-mouse.

Moments of either grim wit (as in the messy stabbing of a blackmailing traitor) or spry comedy (Wang getting rid of her virginity to further the cause) occasionally vary pic's tone but don't bolster the underlying drama.

Wartime Shanghai was far more realistically drawn in Lou Ye's Zhang Ziyi starrer "Purple Butterfly," which also conveyed a stronger sense of resistance and collaborationist politics. (Here, Yee's work, which involves interrogation and torture, is never shown.) Lee's '40s Shanghai, though immaculately costumed, has a standard backlot look; the Hong Kong sequences, largely shot in Malaysia, are much more flavorsome.

Tang, a Beijing drama student who's previously played in some TV series, holds her own against Hong Kong vet Leung, who suggests the cold calculation of his character without ever going much deeper. Fellow vet Chen doesn't get many chances beyond the mahjong table, while Wang Leehom, as the leader of the resistance cell, is just OK, sans much personality.

Alexandre Desplat's music injects some badly needed emotion and drama at certain points, while lensing by Rodrigo Prieto has little of the variety and atmosphere he's demonstarted on recent assignments like "Babel," "Alexander" and Lee's previous "Brokeback Mountain."

Posted: **Thu Aug 30, 2007 9:01 am**

Male-on-female oral sex?! Isn't that a muffdive? So we'll get to see Tang Wei's vagina? If yes, we have our FIRST GUARANTEED nominee for Best Actress!

Posted: **Wed Aug 29, 2007 8:47 pm**

Penelope wrote:God, this is so insulting to me; movies showing people getting tortured, maimed, killed gets an R--hell, sometimes even a PG-13--but movies showing the most beautiful act people can do with each other is censored. I will never, ever understand this.

upside down and everything!!! now this i have to see!

Posted: **Wed Aug 29, 2007 2:42 pm**

I'll be seeing it along with everyone else who is a fan of Ang Lee's. This will make my second NC-17 film in a theater. The first being Almodovar's "Bad Education."

Posted: **Wed Aug 29, 2007 8:05 am**

Wasn't this film pretty much under the radar before the rating made it such big news? Won't there be more people interested in seeing it now than there will be those who were initially interested but will avoid it now because of the rating?

Posted: **Wed Aug 29, 2007 7:28 am**

In another article covering this story, I saw that the top-grossing of the 25 or so NC-17 rated films according to EDI was Showgirls, which I think is particularly awesome.

Posted: **Wed Aug 29, 2007 5:54 am**

God, this is so insulting to me; movies showing people getting tortured, maimed, killed gets an R--hell, sometimes even a PG-13--but movies showing the most beautiful act people can do with each other is censored. I will never, ever understand this.

Posted: **Tue Aug 28, 2007 11:30 pm**

If anyone can overcome the stigma against an NC-17 rating, it will be Ang Lee (who has a couple of hits and an Oscar to his name alreadY).