Wonderful character development!

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Let's be realistic.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Someone pointed out to me that on this date, July 7, 1937, the Japanese attacked Nanjing, murdering 300,000 civilians. This was the beginning of the Japanese war on China. I reflected on this and thought back to those hours in a movie theater on Houston Street in NYC where Ang Lee was attending a screening of his new film, Lust/Caution. I remembered the opening scene, a group of women sitting around a table playing mah jongg, and immediately knew I was watching a master work by this director. Not a note of the film was out of place, not the direction, cinematography, editing, performances. Not the devastating conclusion. Though years have passed, the film remains in my memory much the way my first viewing of La Strada or The Seventh Seal do. It is a film anyone who appreciates master work by a great filmmaker should see in their lifetime, uncut. It is a film as well that captures the essence of the atrocities of that war, the sacrifices, the brutalities. It is a heartbreakingly skewed love story and war story that will resonate long after you experience it. I do believe it should enter the recognized canon of greatest films ever made.

This Chinese movie is a visually stunning drama that convinces with two extremely talented main actors that incarnate two credible and fascinating characters. On one side, you have the charming, naive and shy student Wong Chia Chi who gets coincidentally involved into the resistance movement against Japanese occupation and the Chinese puppet government in Hong Kong back in 1938. She gets introduced to the social circle of Mister Yee's wife in order to approach, then seduce and ultimately trap him. The special agent and recruiter of the puppet government is brutal towards his enemies, emotionally cold and very experienced.Wong Chia Chi becomes Misses Mai and is able to seduce her target but when the resistance movement is ready to get the enemy killed, he moves to Shanghai with his family. The group's plans get discovered and result in a twisted crime after which the organization falls apart and disappears. Four years later, Wong Chia Chi also moves to Shanghai for studies and lives a solitary live in depression and poverty, abandoned by her father and her friends. She meets one of her old partners again who introduces her to an egoistic, pitiless and vengeful undercover agent of the Kuomintang who wants to finish what had begun four years ago. Wong Chia Chi takes the identity of Misses Mai again and soon meets her target on a regular basis. They start to have a relationship that is quite brutal, cold and physical in the beginning but the two solitary souls soon start to develop true emotions towards each other. As the resistance starts to concretely organize the assassination of the target, the matured young woman has to decide which path to choose.The story of this movie is intriguing thanks to a very strong acting and a progressive character development. The film features brutal and cold sex scenes close to a rape but these scenes ultimately get more and more aesthetic and passionate. This radical contrast perfectly portrays both characters and the essence of the movie. In many movies, sex scenes are not very well acted and remain superficial but these ones really make sense, incarnate a certain spirit and feel extremely real as if the two actors were truly in a relationship which is though not the case.The movie is quite slow paced in the beginning and takes some time to kick off which might be difficult for some people but at the same time, this flick gives us a credible portrait of the difficult life during the Second Sino-Japanese War. As it's often the case for contemporary Chinese movies, a lot of budget went into the beautiful costumes, the authentic decorations and the detailed locations. All these elements drown the viewer into a very credible past world and develop a great atmosphere.In the end, any fan of contemporary Chinese movies should check this solid production out. Be sure to view the almost flawless uncensored version that is much more authentic, complex and dynamic than the shortened one.

The title of the film "Lust, Caution", may also be read in Chinese as a "coloured ring", which is the object of crucial significance in the film. The pink-coloured diamond ring signifies the love that Mr Yee had for Chia Chi which Chia Chi realized when she put on the ring in the shop, where a trap was set for Mr Yee. In this pivotal moment, she then made the crucial decision to save her lover, warned him to get away, and as a result, sealed her own fate. Some people criticized the film for being too explicit, which I think missed the point of the film title. Like the film title, which says it's about lust (and ostensibly a warning against it), so in the film, the explicitness made it seems like it's about lust. In fact it's actually about love - Chia Chi's lack of love in her life, and when she found it in Mr Yee, she was prepared to sacrifice herself and her belief for her lover. The love is symbolised by the coloured ring, a possible reading of the film title, and the dual-meaning of the film title encapsulates the duality in the film, and the more important element is the love, not the lust.This film can be seen as a companion piece to Brokeback Mountain. At the end of the film when Mr Yee sat on her bed and realized what he had lost, mirrors the ending scene of Brokeback Mountain with Ennis with Jack's shirt in the closet. Both grieved for the lost love, except that in Mr Yee's case it was him that sent his own true love to death. What's captured in the ending sequence in both films is the image of loss, regret and loneliness of both men.

Hard to say there is a spoiler, but for sure movie is above average.Acting (especially 2 main characters) is at very high level. Plot and drama build with great intensity making you wanna seen what's coming next.I'm not sure what about exactly this picture is about, but I think the most important thing here is feeling (the lust) and consequences that can make you suffer.Would rather give 6.5, but 6 is too low, so 7 ;).Worth watching especially nowadays when it's hard to find something really interesting and moving.