Copernicus sees Ang Lee's NC-17 flick LUST, CAUTION at TIFF!!!

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another great Toronto report from our resident rocket scientist. Thanks for keepin' them coming in, Copernicus!

What kind of world do we live in that Ang Lee can out-kink Paul Verhoeven, and Paul Verhoeven can out-direct Ang Lee? Ang Lee's latest, LUST, CAUTION (SE, JE), has almost exactly the same premise as Paul Verhoeven's hit of the last Toronto Film Festiveal, BLACK BOOK. Both are stories set in countries occupied during WWII where a member of the resistance must seduce one of her treacherous overlords so she can fuck her people free. Complications arise. You might have heard that the MPAA's censors are slapping LUST, CAUTION with an NC-17 for "filth." Ok they don't call it that, but let's cut the crap. And Ang Lee has essentially told them to fuck off. Good for him! It isn't like this is nasty, dirty porn, it is Ang Lee, super-artist, for Christ sakes. He can even make the Hulk pretentious. But I will say this -- he almost makes Paul Verhoeven look like a puritan. There were sex positions in LUST, CAUTION that I'm still trying to work out the topology of, and I have advanced degrees in math! I'm pretty sure some of them violated the Poincare conjecture. Having said that, Ang Lee just doesn't have the freak-sex panache that Paul Verhoeven does. Verhoeven realizes that a little beefcake goes down easier with a side of cheese. but when people disrobe in an Ang Lee movie, put on your turtleneck and John Lennon glasses, because some serious shit is about to go down. There will be some crying later. Now before you go acusing me of being an Ang Lee hater, or Paul Haggis sympathizer, or whatever you talkbackers are into branding people if they don't fall into your camp these days, check out my BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN review from last year. Nobody does perverted forbidden love like Ang Lee, and here he outdoes himself in terms of setting up obstacles and more-pushing acts. This is all fine, but along the way he committed an unforgivable sin -- one of the characters does something so outrageously stupid that I just wasn't going for it. It took me out of the movie. It is central to the plot, and I understand exactly why it had to happen thematically, but I just was not in there with them. And I understand that this is at least partly based on a true story, and it even had to happen that way to make the most artistic sense, I am just saying that I wasn't buying what they were selling. Chalk it up to the acting, the script, or the director, but in the end Ang Lee has to make me believe, and he didn't quite. The only other major negative is the running time. At two and a half hours, he could have cut a couple of dozen games of Mahjong, or some of the bickering of the rebel crew, or furtive, yet meaningful glances. Having said that, the film is epic in scope, gorgeous, masterfully shot, and even interesting. I have to confess that before this film, my most extensive exposure to WWII Shanghai was TEMPLE OF DOOM. Of course the Ang Lee's Shanghai and Hong Kong are worlds that are layered, nuanced, beaten down by the ravages of war, but animated with political intrigue and repressed hope. The performances are almost uniformly spectacular. In particular Tony Leung Chiu Wai practally smolders as Mr. Yee. In the end, LUST, CAUTION is a good, watchable movie. But it isn't great. Maybe I expect too much from Ang Lee, but there is little margin for error when you make people put on their serious hat. So it is a little unfair to compare this to BLACK BOOK, but I left from seeing that with a huge smile on my face. I am sad to say I came away from LUST, CAUTION mostly perplexed and a little disappointed. -Copernicus