Emotional Betrayal

Two years after encamping in the Canadian Rockies to film Brokeback Mountain (see AC Jan. '06), Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC, headed halfway around the world to rejoin director Ang Lee for their second collaboration, the World War II espionage drama Lust, Caution. Based on a short story by Eileen Chang, the film is set in Hong Kong and Shanghai during the Japanese occupation. With this picture, Lee's first in China since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (AC Jan. Ol), the chameleonic director tackles yet another genre: film noir.

The screenplay expands upon Chang's 28-page story, dramatizing the backstory of its main character, Chia Chih Wong (played by Tang Wei). While attending Hong Kong University, she is recruited to join a student theater group and blossoms as an actress. Eventually the students' anti-Japanese productions morph into plans for more drastic action: murdering a member of the puppet government, security minister Mr. Yee (Tony Leung). The bait will be Chia Chih, who is instructed to befriend Mrs. Yee (Joan Chen) and seduce her sini...

If you are already a vLex customer, Access Here