NEW YORK — THE first image in Ang Lee's new movie, "Lust, Caution," is of an animal, a watchdog, a German Shepherd. Only after that do we see a human, a man, also standing guard.
When Lee cast Chinese-TV actress Tang Wei to play the lead, in her first movie, he warned her that there would be sex scenes, though he didn't know how explicit they'd be. The novice film actress told him, "I'm leaving myself to you," having no idea how wrenching the experience would be -- that she'd pass out, for instance, when they finished one shoot.
Lee's male lead, Tony Leung, had a different acting profile, a quarter-century of making films that established him as one of Asia's top stars. So Lee felt comfortable loading up the Hong Kong-based Leung with materials to prepare him for his role -- from a Humphrey Bogart film noir to one of Henri Rousseau's moody jungle paintings, "with the predator and prey," Leung noted.
Leung found the painting helpful indeed for understanding his character in "Lust, Caution," who would be both the hunter and hunted. But it also prepared him for working with the exacting Taiwanese American, who was directing his first film since winning the Academy Award for "Brokeback Mountain."
"I think he's the predator," Leung said with a laugh, "I'm the prey."
Setting the trap
"Lust, Caution," a Focus Features release that opens Oct. 5 in Los Angeles, is set in Shanghai during World War II, when much of China was occupied by the Japanese. Leung plays the local secret service head who is collaborating with them and whose main job is ferreting out -- and killing -- his fellow Chinese who are resisting the invaders. Tang Wei plays a naive student actress recruited by the resistance to seduce him and set him up for execution.
Based on a short story by Shanghai-born Eileen Chang, who lived out the end of her life as a recluse in Los Angeles, the Mandarin-language "Lust, Caution," would seem to have little in common with "Brokeback Mountain," with one key exception -- the central role of sex and how it is potentially deadly for the protagonists in each. Even then, the joining of the gay cowboys in "Brokeback" is brief, and mostly clothed, while "Lust, Caution" has earned an NC-17 rating by using its main characters' sexual positioning to depict the evolution of their relationship, one that ends with their limbs, and more, elaborately entwined.
