Lust, Caution

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  • Opened September 28, 2007 
  • 2 hr 38 min
  • NC-17 | some explicit sexuality

  • Parents: Common Sense Media says not for kids. More on child suitability

  • The World War II Japanese occupation of Shanghai in 1942 continues in force. Mrs. Mak walks into a café, places a call, and then sits and waits. She remembers how her story began in 1938 China. She is not in fact Mrs. Mak, but shy Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei). With WWII underway, Wong has been left behind by her father, who has escaped to England. As a freshman at university, she meets fellow student Kuang Yu Min (Wang Leehom). He convenes a core group of students to carry out a radical and ambitious plan to assassinate a top Japanese collaborator, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung). Each student has a part to play; Wong will be Mrs. Mak, who will gain Yee’s trust by befriending his wife and then draw the man into an affair. An unexpected fatal twist spurs her to flee. Shanghai, 1941. Kuang re-enters her life. Now part of the organized resistance, he enlists her to again become Mrs. Mak in a revival of the plot to kill Yee. Full synopsis

  • Cast: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Tang Wei, Joan Chen, Wang Lee Hom
  • Director: Ang Lee
  • Genres: Art House/Foreign, Drama, Romance, Suspense/Thriller

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Critic Reviews

100
TV Guide
| Ken Fox

Lee has perfectly captured the details, textures, sights and sounds of a China caught between East and West, occupied by an ancient enemy and quaking on the eve of an earth-shaking revolution. Read full review

88
Philadelphia Inquirer
| Steven Rea

A rich, beautifully detailed espionage thriller that captures the bygone days of Shanghai - and 1940s Hollywood noirs' romantic evocations of same - Lust, Caution is also one of those rare movie experiences: Its scenes of the trysts between Yee and Mak, from their rough-stuff first encounter to the long, tangled love-making sessions of subsequent meetings, are truly erotic. Read full review

88
Rolling Stone
| Peter Travers

Lee is a true master, and his potently erotic and suspenseful Lust, Caution casts a spell you won't want to break. Read full review

75
San Francisco Chronicle
| Mick LaSalle

Stylized and visually arresting, with intense sex scenes that earned the film an NC-17 rating, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is an immersion into another time, place and mentality. Read full review

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Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Tang Wei in "Lust, Caution."