Movie review: Lust, Caution ***

Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Tang Wei in Lust, Caution.
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I've done the math: Eileen Chang's story Lust, Caution is 68 pages long in its new (largish print) Random House edition. Ang Lee's film version is about 2 1/2 hours long. Proportionately, Lee's War and Peace would require 25 hours on screen.

Which is not to say that Lust, Caution is murdered by its length - just wounded. What survives is a sumptuously beautiful, violently erotic combination of spy thriller and doomed romance.

It begins in Hong Kong, flashing back to Shanghai 1938 during the Japanese occupation. Gradually -very gradually - the plot is revealed: Shy college freshman Wong Chia (Tang Wei) meets Kuang (Wang Leehom), who has started a "patriotic drama society. " He enlists her not only as the troupe's leading lady but to help carry out a plot to assassinate Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), a collaborator who runs the brutal secret service for the hated occupiers.

A gifted actress, Wong takes quickly to her Mata Hari role. She is "Mrs. Mak," whose husband is always away on business. Her charm and impeccable manners gain her entry to the mahjong circle of Mrs. Yee (Joan Chen) and the elite Chinese ladies who chat over lunch about how to get nylon stockings, cigarettes and other luxuries they crave from Hong Kong. By befriending Yee's wife, she is to draw him into an affair and breach his security, thus enabling her comrades to bump him off.

The first attempt fails. But a few years later, Kuang re-enters her life in Shanghai and re-enlists her to reprise her role. Yee has risen in the puppet government, becoming chief of something like the Dept. of Homeland Interrogation and Torture.

Also rising is his lust - the caution is declining.

Oscar-winning director Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain) superbly depicts the nuances of Wong's dangerous double life, particularly in the wonderful mahjong scenes, where she gleans precious tidbits of information from the gossip. Beneath everything lies the tension of calculating her next move, in and out of the game.

The beautiful, reed-thin Tang Wei, with her deceptively cherubic face, lends a certain purity to a very impure character. The pain of losing her virginity (crucial to conceal, since she's pretending to be married) is expressed by a masterful variety of subtle facial expressions and gestures, as natural as her powers of seduction.

Meanwhile, Leung's Mr. Yee is full of chilling suspicion in every eye movement, every spare word uttered, every hold-your-breath moment of silence - even as his sexual brutality overpowers both of them.

Lust? Lots. Extremely raw and well-choreographed. Just the opposite of the restrained eroticism of Brokeback. The scenes that earned this film its dreaded NC-17 rating are not hard core, but they're close, with enough contortions to rival the Kama Sutra. The first such encounter is nothing less than rape. As they drift further into S&M, it seems Wong is acquiring Mr. Yee's kinky tastes. The moments of frontal nudity avoid the phony peekaboo modesty of most movie sex: This issue is psychological revelation rather than voyeuristic titillation.

At 157 minutes, there's plenty of time to ponder that issue, with overt nods to the Grant-Bergman Suspicion, among other Hollywood films, and its never less than exquisite photography. Alexandre Desplat's swoonworthy score is a sure-bet at Oscar time .

The plot resembles that of Black Book, Paul Verhoeven's tale of a young Jewish woman who beds a Nazi on behalf of the resistance. But James Schamus' screenplay here is not so adept, and the time shifts are confusing. Lee would have done better to rely on chronology instead of deconstruction. This isn't his best film, but it's nevertheless fascinating.

If only it had less caution and more lust.

The Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Barry Paris is film critic for the Post-Gazette.

Contact him at: parispg48@aol.com.