Lust Caution

Now a major motion picture from Oscar-winning director Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain): an intensely passionate story of love and espionage, set in Shanghai during World War II. In the midst of the Japanese occupation of China and Hong Kong, two lives become intertwined: Wong Chia Chi, a young student active in the resistance, and Mr. Yee, a powerful political figure who works for the Japanese occupational government. As these two move deftly between Shanghai’s tea parties and secret interrogations, they become embroiled in the complicated politics of wartime — and in a mutual attraction that may be more than what they expected. Written in lush, lavish prose, and with the tension of a political thriller,Lust, Cautionbrings 1940s Shanghai artfully to life even as it limns the erotic pulse of a doomed love affair. From the Trade Paperback edition.

In 1940s Shanghai, beautiful young Jiazhi spends her days playing mahjong and drinking tea with high society ladies. But China is occupied by invading Japanese forces and things are not always what they seem in wartime. Jiazhi's life is a front. A patriotic student radical, her mission is to seduce a powerful employee of the occupying government and lead him to the assassin's bullet. Yet as she waits for him to arrive at their liaison, Jiazhi begins to wonder if she is cut out to be a femme fatale and coldly take Mr Yi to his death. Or is she beginning to fall in love with him? A passionate tale of espionage, deception and love, Lust, Caution is accompanied here by four further dazzling short stories by Eileen Chang.

In 2007, Ang Lee made an espionage thriller based on the short story "Lust, Caution" by Eileen Chang, China’s most famous female author of the twentieth century. The release of the film became a trigger for heated debates on issues of national identity and political loyalty, and brought unexpectedly harsh criticism from China, where Ang Lee was labelled a traitor in scathing internet critiques, whilst the film's leading actress Tang Wei was banned from appearing on screen for two years. This book analyses Ang Lee’s art of film adaptation through the lens of modern literary and film theory, as well as featuring detailed readings and analyses of different dialogues and scenes, directorial and authorial decisions and intentions, while at the same time confronting the intense political debates resulting from the film’s subject matter. The theories of Freud, Lacan, Deleuze, Bataille and others are used to identify and clarify issues raised by the film related to gender, sexuality, eroticism, power, manipulation, and betrayal; the themes of lust and caution are dealt with in conjunction with the controversial issues of contemporary political consciousness concerning patriotism, and the Sino-Japanese War complicated by divided historical experiences and cross-Taiwan Strait relationships. The contributors to this volume cover translation and adaptation, loyalty and betrayal, collaboration and manipulation, playing roles and performativity, whilst at the same time intertwining these with issues of national identity, political loyalty, collective memory, and gender. As such, the book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese and Asian cinema and literature, as well as those interested in modern Chinese history and cultural studies.

In 1940s' Shanghai, Jiazhi's mission is to seduce an employee of the occupying government and lead him to the assassin's bullet. But she begins to wonder if she can coldly take Mr Yi to his death. A tale of espionage and love accompanied by four further short stories.

Born in Taiwan, Ang Lee is one of cinema's most versatile and daring directors. His ability to cut across cultural, national, and sexual boundaries has given him recognition in all corners of the world, the ability to work with complete artistic freedom whether inside or outside of Hollywood, and two Academy Awards for Best Director. He has won astounding critical acclaim for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), which transformed the status of martial arts films across the globe, Brokeback Mountain (2005), which challenged the reception and presentation of homosexuality in mainstream cinema, and Life of Pi (2012), Lee's first use of groundbreaking 3D technology and his first foray into complex spiritual themes. In this volume, the only full-length study of Lee's work, Whitney Crothers Dilley analyzes all of his career to date: Lee's early Chinese trilogy films (including The Wedding Banquet, 1993, and Eat Drink Man Woman, 1994), period drama (Sense and Sensibility, 1995), martial arts (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000), blockbusters (Hulk, 2003), and intimate portraits of wartime psychology, from the Confederate side of the Civil War (Ride with the Devil, 1999) to Japanese-occupied Shanghai (Lust/Caution, 2007). Dilley examines Lee's favored themes such as father/son relationships and intergenerational conflict in The Ice Storm (1997) and Taking Woodstock (2009). By looking at the beginnings of Lee's career, Dilley positions the filmmaker's work within the roots of the Taiwan New Cinema movement, as well as the larger context of world cinema. Using suggestive readings of both gender and identity, this new study not only provides a valuable academic resource but also an enjoyable read that uncovers the enormous appeal of this acclaimed director.

Two of the most stylized shots in cinema—the close-up and the long shot—embody distinct attractions. The iconicity of the close-up magnifies the affective power of faces and elevates film to the discourse of art. The depth of the long shot, in contrast, indexes the facts of life and reinforces our faith in reality. Each configures the relation between image and distance that expands the viewer’s power to see, feel, and conceive. To understand why a director prefers one type of shot over the other then is to explore more than aesthetics: It uncovers significant assumptions about film as an art of intervention or organic representation. Close-ups and Long Shots in Modern Chinese Cinemas is the first book to compare these two shots within the cultural, historical, and cinematic traditions that produced them. In particular, the global revival of Confucian studies and the transnational appeal of feminism in the 1980s marked a new turn in the composite cultural education of Chinese directors whose shot selections can be seen as not only stylistic expressions, but ethical choices responding to established norms about self-restraint, ritualism, propriety, and female agency. Each of the films discussed—Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin, Jia Zhangke’s I Wish I Knew, and Wei Desheng’s Cape No. 7— represents a watershed in Chinese cinemas that redefines the evolving relations among film, politics, and ethics. Together these works provide a comprehensive picture of how directors contextualize close-ups and long shots in ways that make them interpretable across many films as bellwethers of social change.

"Maggie understands that splatter for splatter's sake is boring. Psychopathy is boring. Coldness is boring. She's interested in feeling, and when her stories turn violent (as they frequently do), it's with a surreal emotional barbarity that distorts the entire world. You can mop up blood with any fabric. Maggie's concern is with the wound left behind, because the wound never leaves-it haunts. As a result, each of these stories leaves a wound of its own. Some weep, watching as you try (and fail) to recover. Others laugh. But never without feeling." -B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space "And once finished, I felt like my tongue had been misplaced, guts heavy and expanded ... gums numb with a tongue that'd been put elsewhere, my mouth clean around a pipe weaving up through pitch and shadow ... and well past ready, primed for delight, waiting but knowing I had already been filled to skin; crying shit, hearing piss, fingernails seeping bile, pores dribbling blood, soles slopping off and out to meet a drain mid-floor ..." -Christopher Norris, author of Hunchback '88

As China rose to its position of global superpower, Chinese groups in the West watched with anticipation and trepidation. In this volume, international scholars examine how artists, writers, filmmakers, and intellectuals from the Chinese diaspora represented this new China to global audiences. The chapters, often personal in nature, focus on the nexus between the political and economic rise of China and the cultural products this period produced, where new ideas of nation, identity, and diaspora were forged.