In the history of Hollywood, few designations have been as commercially toxic as the NC-17 rating. Instituted by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to replace the stigmatised X certificate, it was intended to denote adult content without the pornographic connotations. In practice, it became a box-office death sentence, a scarlet letter guaranteeing exclusion from major cinema chains, mainstream advertising, and broad audience reach. Few films dared to carry it without appeal; fewer still survived it. The most prominent and defiant exception occupies a singular place in cinematic history: Ang Lee’s 2007 period spy thriller Lust, Caution. Not only did this Taiwanese-directed work claim the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, but it also achieved what was then considered unthinkable—it became a genuine commercial success. With global box-office receipts soaring past $67 million against a $15 million budget, it stands, arguably, as the most commercially successful NC-17 rated film ever made, a testament to the potent alchemy of directorial vision, critical acclaim, and the allure of the forbidden.
The film’s formidable substance is drawn from the 1979 novella by the acclaimed Chinese-American writer Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing), a work of taut, psychological fiction itself inspired by one of the most tantalising real-life espionage stories of the Sino-Japanese War. The source is the case of Zheng Pingru, a beautiful socialite and resistance agent who, operating in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, infiltrated the inner circle of Ding Mocun, the notoriously ruthless chief of secret police for Wang Jingwei’s pro-Japanese collaborationist government. Her mission was assassination; its ultimate, tragic failure has echoed through decades, finding its most lavish and controversial reinterpretation in Lee’s hands.
Lee and screenwriter James Schamus structure their narrative with the meticulous, suspenseful layering of a classic thriller. The plot opens in 1942 Shanghai, a city groaning under the Japanese yoke. Within the heavily guarded residential compound for Wang Jingwei’s regime elite, a tense game of mahjong unfolds. Among the players is the elegant, inscrutable Mrs. Mak (Tang Wei in her cinematic debut), the wife of a Hong Kong businessman ruined after Pearl Harbor. She socialises with the wives of powerful collaborators, including Mrs. Yee (Joan Chen), whose husband, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), is the feared head of the secret police.
From this pressure cooker of occupied Shanghai, the film pivots via an extended flashback to 1938 and the sun-dappled, illusory safety of British Hong Kong. Here we meet Mrs. Mak as Wong Chia Chi, a young woman fleeing the Japanese advance. Enrolling at Lingnan University, she is swept into a circle of fervently patriotic students led by the charismatic Kuang Yu Min (Wang Leehom). Their theatre troupe, staging plays to fund the war effort, achieves a popular success that convinces Kuang their talents should be deployed for more direct action. Their target materialises in the form of Mr. Yee’s sycophantic assistant, Mr. Tsao (Chin Kar-lok). In a dangerously amateurish scheme, the students commandeer an abandoned house and concoct an elaborate fiction, presenting Wong Chia Chi as the sophisticated wife of a wealthy businessman, ‘Mrs. Mak’. The objective is seduction: Wong must lure Mr. Yee to a secluded location where the students will assassinate him. The plan’s grim prerequisites force Wong into a sacrificial deflowering by a more experienced cohort, a chilling early indication of how her body and identity are becoming instruments of the cause. The operation ends in fiasco and panicked bloodshed with the murder of Tsao, scattering the students and leaving their idealism stained.
The narrative leaps forward three years to the grim reality of 1941 Shanghai, a once-vibrant metropolis now choked by deprivation. Wong, scraping a living as a teacher, is recontacted by Kuang, now working under the seasoned, cynical intelligence operative Old Wu (Tuo Tsung-hua). The assassination plot is revived, but this time under professional, cold-blooded auspices. Wong’s mission remains the same: infiltrate Yee’s world and draw him into a trap. She succeeds, reigniting his cautious interest. What follows is the film’s core and its most controversial element: a series of intense, graphically depicted sexual encounters that chart the terrifying, intimate evolution of their relationship. Lee films these not as erotic set-pieces but as brutal, psychological battlegrounds—a harrowing dance of domination, submission, vulnerability, and, devastatingly, authentic connection. As the trap is finally set, Wong is forced to confront a catastrophic emotional truth: she has genuinely fallen in love with the man she is supposed to betray.
As an international co-production between Taiwan, China, and the United States, Lust, Caution further cemented Ang Lee’s reputation as a director of staggering genre and thematic range. Here, he masterfully synthesises the suspense mechanics of a spy thriller with the deep emotional currents of a melodrama. The setting is both familiar and profoundly alien to a Western audience. While World War II is a well-trodden cinematic landscape, Lee presents it through the prism of the Asian theatre, with its complex tapestry of Chinese nationalism, collaboration, and resistance—a history often marginalised in Western-centric narratives. The film acknowledges Shanghai’s unique, quasi-neutral International Settlement, a Casablanca-like enclave where a diverse populace, including the Indian Muslim jeweller (Anupam Kher) who plays a pivotal role in the climax, operates in the shadows of larger conflicts. This setting provides a richly textured, morally ambiguous backdrop against which the personal drama unfolds.
Inevitably, comparisons arose. Some critics, noting the period glamour and a strategic screening of Intermezzo (starring Ingrid Bergman), glimpsed the ghost of classical Hollywood romance. A more compelling parallel was drawn with Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book (2006), another World War II thriller centred on a female resistance agent (Carice van Houten) who becomes sexually entangled with a high-ranking enemy officer. The similarities, however, are largely superficial. Where Verhoeven opts for propulsive, pulpish energy and overt sensationalism, Lee pursues a slow-burn, intensely psychological approach. His direction is patient, almost novelistic, dwelling on the minute details of social ritual, the weight of glances, and the suffocating atmosphere of paranoia. This deliberateness is both a strength and a potential barrier. The plot requires a significant investment from the viewer, and the intricate political context—the factions within the Chinese resistance, the nuances of Wang Jingwei’s government—can be elusive to those unfamiliar with the period’s history. The film demands to be met on its own exacting terms.
Its triumph in overcoming these demands rests overwhelmingly on its central performances. Tang Wei, in a debut of astonishing courage and nuance, delivers a tour de force. She traces Wong Chia Chi’s journey from wide-eyed innocence to weary resolve and finally to shattered, conflicted passion with breathtaking subtlety. It is a performance conducted as much in silence and stolen looks as in dialogue. Opposite her, Tony Leung Chiu-wai is magnificent. Using his iconic charisma and world-weary handsomeness, he crafts a Mr. Yee who is not a mere monster but a profoundly damaged, isolated man. His paranoia is palpable, his cruelty evident, yet Leung imbues him with a tragic vulnerability that makes the burgeoning connection with Wong not just credible but heartbreakingly inevitable. Their chemistry is the film’s volatile, indispensable engine.
It was, of course, the explicit nature of their on-screen intimacy that ignited global controversy and directly led to the NC-17 rating. The American distributor, Focus Features, made the bold and correct decision not to appeal, understanding that the rating’s notoriety could be leveraged as a mark of artistic seriousness. The repercussions were far more severe in Mainland China, where approximately thirty minutes of footage were excised, and Tang Wei faced an unofficial but devastating two-year blacklist for her ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘indecent’ participation. The film also garnered unwanted publicity from a defamation lawsuit filed by Zheng Pingru’s surviving sister, adding a layer of real-world discord to its historical fiction.
Despite—or perhaps partly because of—this maelstrom of controversy, Lust, Caution is a superlative period thriller. When met with the patience its slow pace requires, it reveals itself as a work of directorial mastery. Lee’s control over mood and composition is absolute, aided by Rodrigo Prieto’s sumptuous, shadow-laden cinematography and Alexandre Desplat’s superb, melancholic score, which evokes a sense of ‘old-school’ romantic fatalism perfectly suited to the material. Even the sex scenes, which shocked many in 2007, now feel less gratuitous in an age of streaming-service explicitness. Within the film’s architecture, they are not salacious interludes but essential, brutal chapters in a story about the utter collapse of the boundary between performance and self, between duty and desire.
If the film possesses a significant flaw, it lies in its denouement. The ending is uncompromisingly dark, cynical, and abrupt. Yee’s swift, cold-blooded retaliation and Wong’s almost passive acceptance of her fate deliver a profound emotional punch, but its full, devastating resonance depends on the viewer’s understanding of the war’s closing act and the grim fate that awaited many collaborators and those associated with them. Without that historical context, the conclusion can feel frustratingly anti-climactic, a sudden narrative stop rather than a tragic culmination. It is a finale that trusts its audience with a bleak, historically-informed truth, a gamble that not all will appreciate.
Lust, Caution is a monumental achievement. It defiantly reclaimed the NC-17 rating from the realm of commercial poison, proving that adult themes, handled with artistic rigour and emotional truth, could find a substantial audience. A complex, challenging, and ultimately devastating work, it remains Ang Lee’s most audacious and sexually frank film—a dangerous, beautiful, and unforgettable exploration of the lust for love and the caution of death.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
==
Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
InLeo blog @drax.leo
InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo
Leodex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax
Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax
1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e
BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9
