Lust, Caution

Director Ang Lee won an Oscar for his previous film, Brokeback Mountain, the story of two gay cowpokes who can't "quit" each other. Now he pushes the sexual envelope much further in his new movie, Lust, Caution, due to all the inventive levels of intercourse on display here. Kind of a Chinese Casablanca set in 1942 Shanghai, the complicated plot concerns a young woman (stunning newcomer Tang Wei) playing emotional espionage with a powerful politician (Tony Leung). She is an actress drawn into an intricate plot to assassinate the man by luring him into an affair. This real-life drama fails to materialize until circumstances create an opportunity for her to really pull it off years later. This leads to a hot, and we mean hot, round of sexual trysts between the two, comprising some of the roughest boinking the screen has seen since Marlon Brando buttered up Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris. This Asian tango certainly earns it's rare NC-17 rating (most studios will cut a film in order to avoid such a restricted tag, since they believe it negatively affects the box office revenue); and to its credit Focus Features is releasing the film uncut and uncensored. When they aren't rolling each other, Leung and Wei keep our interest as the devious plot unfolds in an overly long two hours and 37 minutes. Despite its length, Lee has created visual perfection, successfully bringing the Shanghai of World War II back to life in vivid detail. From first-rate cinematography and production design to its lush score, this is an extraordinarily well-made movie, something we've come to expect from the man who also gave the world Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.