Lust, Caution

the story this film was based on

Focus Features (United States)
China Film Group Corporation (China)
| country =
| language = Mandarin
| gross = $67.1 million directed by Ang Lee, based on the 1979 novella of the same name by Eileen Chang. Lust, Caution is set in Hong Kong in 1938 and in Shanghai in 1942, when the city was occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army and ruled by the puppet government led by Wang Jingwei. The film depicts a group of Chinese university students from The University of Hong Kong who plot to assassinate a high ranking special agent and recruiter working for the puppet government by luring him into a honey trap. The film is generally accepted to be based on the historical event of Chinese spy Zheng Pingru's failed attempt to assassinate the Japanese collaborator Ding Mocun. With this film, Lee won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival for the second time, the first being with Brokeback Mountain. The film adaptation and the story are loosely based on events that took place during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. The film's sex scenes resulted in the film being rated NC 17 in the United States. The film grossed $67 million worldwide over $16 million budget, making it the highest grossing NC 17 rated film of all time.

The title of the work, Lust, Caution, has a double meaning in Chinese. The character for "lust" (色, sè) can be read as "colour", while "caution" (戒, jiè) can be read as "ring", therefore the title can also read as "colored ring", an object that plays a pivotal role in the story. The two alternative readings of the title are interwoven into a cautionary tale of lust and love through the symbolic use of the ring.

The actors who played university classmates, spent six months of preproduction in Hong Kong just to get into character and understand the period before filming. During this period the group of actors, including Tang Wei and Wang Leehom became very close friends. Both Tang Wei and Tony Leung Chiu wai were asked whether the sex scenes in the movie were unsimulated. Tang Wei responded, "In the movie, we are just doing what we should do to have a baby." As for Tony Leung, he responded, "When the bodies collide with each other, it is indeed like a fake show!"

The title of the work, Lust, Caution, has a double meaning in Chinese. The character for "lust" (色, sè) can be read as "colour", while "caution" (戒, jiè) can be read as "ring", therefore the title can also read as "colored ring", an object that plays a pivotal role in the story. The two alternate readings of the title are interwoven into a cautionary tale of lust and love through the symbolic use of the ring. The portrayal of female sexuality and desire in the film emphasizes the shame and awkwardness of Chia Chi's sexuality versus the role she must play as "Mrs. Mak", which serves the nation rather than her needs as a woman. Sex and sexuality are used as tangible tools in proving patriotism in this film, and in each instance of Chia Chi's bodily sacrifice, she is representing the recognizable symbol of violation experienced by China as a nation while under Japanese occupation. Through each of the sex scenes, a tangible but subtle difference can be seen in Wong Chia Chi's character as she becomes more comfortable with her sexual desires; a gradual acceptance of pleasure along with a growing role of dominance in hers and Mr. Yee's relationship as compared to the submissive and easily manipulated role she fills in the group of comrades that she is plotting against the Japanese and their collaborators with.

Lust, Caution premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion, the second such award for Ang Lee. It was released in U. S. theaters on September 28, 2007, where it was rated NC 17 by the Motion Picture Association of America due to some explicit sex scenes. Lee stated that he would make no changes to attempt to get an R rating. After the movie's premiere, director Ang Lee was displeased that Chinese news media (including those from Taiwan) had greatly emphasized the sex scenes in the movie. The version released in the People's Republic of China was cut by about seven minutes (by the director himself) to make it suitable for younger audiences, since China has no rating system. Scenes of violence were also removed from the mainland version, and the total minutes of the cuts was around 30. The version released in Malaysia was approved by the Film Censorship Board of Malaysia without alterations and was rated 18SX—those under 18 are barred from the cinema. The uncut version was released on DVD in 2008, as well as R rated version since certain rental outlets and stores like Blockbuster video did not carry NC 17 titles.

In 2007, two DVD versions of Lust, Caution were released: the original NC 17 version and the censored R rated version. On March 30, 2021, Kino Lorber released the NC 17 version of the film on Blu ray.

Tang Wei was ostracized from the mainland Chinese movie industry and did not work for three years because the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) disapproved of her sexual acts in the film. All print ads and video content using Tang's image were removed and her endorsements were discontinued. She was set to star in Tian Zhuangzhuang's big budget period film The Warrior and the Wolf (2009), but was replaced by Maggie Q. Director Ang Lee released a statement saying that he is "very regretful" over Tang's blacklisting and that he "will do everything I can to support her in this difficult time". Co star Tony Leung stated that "our work is only to express our roles and I don't think that an actor should be blacklisted because of this" and that "the whole crew should have a responsibility. We are a team and not an individual, and I'm a part of this team". In February 2009, during her absence from the movie industry, Tang was reported to have briefly attended drama classes at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom.

The film was co produced by American companies Focus Features and River Road Productions, Chinese companies Shanghai Film Group Corporation and Haishang Films, and the Taiwanese Hai Sheng Film Production Company. The film was directed by Ang Lee, a Taiwanese citizen, and the actors/actresses are from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States. It was shot in Shanghai, the neighboring province of Zhejiang, Hong Kong (at Hong Kong University), and some locations in Penang and Ipoh in Malaysia used as 1930s/1940s Hong Kong. Initially, the film's country was identified as "China USA" by the organizers of the Venice Film Festival. However, the Venice Film Festival changed the film to "USA China Taiwan, China" on its official schedule shortly thereafter. When the film premiered at the event, Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council protested the Venice event's use of "Taiwan, China" to identify films from the island and blamed the People's Republic of China for the move. After the film's premiere, Taiwan submitted the film as its Best Foreign Film Oscar entry. However, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences asked Taiwan to withdraw the film because key members of the film crew were not locals. Academy spokeswoman Teni Melidonian said in an e mail organizers refused to accept the film because "an insufficient number of Taiwanese participated in the production of the film," violating a rule that requires foreign countries to certify their locals "exercised artistic control" over their submission.

On September 13, 2007, an elderly lady, Zheng Tianru, staged a press conference in Los Angeles, claiming that the movie was about real life events that happened in World War II, and wrongfully portrayed her older sister, Zheng Pingru, as a promiscuous secret agent who seduced and eventually fell in love with the assassination target Ding Mocun, alleging the characters were renamed to Wong Chia Chi and Mr. Yee in the film. Taiwan's investigation bureau confirmed that Zheng Pingru failed to kill Ding Mocun because her gun jammed, rather than developing a romantic relationship with the assassin's target. Ang Lee maintains that Eileen Chang wrote the original short story as fiction. On Metacritic, the film had a weighted average score of 61 out of 100, based on 35 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The Chinese press gave the film generally positive reviews. In analyzing how successful Lee's film was as an adaptation of Eileen Chang's short story, literary critic Leo Ou fan Lee wrote in Muse Magazine that he 'found [his] loyalties divided between Eileen Chang and Ang Lee. But after three viewings of the film, I have finally opted for Lee because deep down I believe in film magic which can sometimes displace textual fidelity.' In an earlier issue of Muse however, film critic Perry Lam had criticized Lee's direction: 'in his eagerness to make the movie appealing to a mass audience, Lee seems guilty of sentimentalism.' Sentimental or not, there is certainly a palpable trace of Lee's sympathy for Chang's personal love life, "It was hard for me to live in Eileen Chang's world There are days I hated her for it. It's so sad, so tragic. But you realize there's a shortage of love in her life: romantic love, family love." He added, "This is the story of what killed love for her." Audiences across Taiwan received the premiere of Lust, Caution with excitement stemming from pride over the fact that Ang Lee hails from Taiwan and the fact that the film received many international awards. The mainstream media in Taiwan built up an enormous amount of anticipation and fever for the world premiere of Lust, Caution with a continuous gossip channel focused on the explicit and controversial portrayal of sexuality Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times named it the 6th best film of 2007.

It has been noted by critics (including Bryan Appleyard) that the Hong Kong sequences in the film set in the late 1930s include "London taxis" of two types (FX3, FX4) that were only manufactured onwards from 1948 and 1958 respectively. The film features Japanese orthography that wasn't used before 1946 in a classroom scene. Tony Leung's wrist watch is not period accurate for the 1930s. The size is much larger than a men's rectangular shaped watch from this period.