Lust, Caution

is a film that should be judged after you've had some time to sleep on it. Let's just get one thing out of the way. There has been a lot of buzz & controversy over the explicit sex scenes (be warned - the film has a NC-17 rating). By no means were they gratuitous but they were also not Hollywood romanticized either. "Raw" and "honest" are probably the best adjectives and after letting the movie sink in a for a little bit, I do think the explicit scenes (with judicious use of the medium shots and close ups) were effective in illustrating the "lust," repression, anger, loneliness and later on "love" between Mr Yee (Tony Leung) and Wang Jiazhi (Wei Tang). So my initial shock and awe has gradually turned into sympathy and appreciation. Like the trailer , the characters say a lot even when they say nothing at all. There's a lot of subtlety that can easily be written off as wooden or mundane. The cinematography is what you would expect from an Ang Lee film - simply beautiful. Clocking in at 2hr 38 minutes, I did feel the movie could have been shorter and yet still deliver but maybe Ang Lee felt the time was needed to let his characters breath and really develop (In fact, it would seem that he feels this way a lot ;-) Just watch "The Hulk"). Being a very limited release, Viks and I had to drive all the way to Irvine to see this one. Well worth the drive! More info on the film here.