Yourself?

Lust, Caution

I caught Lust, Caution today with Geri, and I thought it was a pretty good movie.

Just wanted to note a few things I got from the movie before I go back to studying.

Lust, Caution is a movie about love, and really explores love in so many ways. Love of country, love of performance, love between friends and comrades, love between lover and mistress, love between married couples, physical love, and mental love.

I thought it very philosophically similar to Infernal Affairs, which is another great movie I love, but perhaps the nuancing of the tale left many people lost. Many key points were.. too nuanced. For example, Mrs Yee knowing that her husband has been sleeping around by the use of the term "Se4 Gui4" over their mahjong conversations.

I thought the mahjong conversations were a whole story by themselves. It's really worth a deeper examination, but I can't keep all those facts flying at me straight. What I caught tho, was the powerlessness of these women, in times of war, yet there was this determination to keep up to date. The mahjong partners keep changing, as the movie moves from shanghai to hongkong and back as the war progresses. Yet there is always this.. hidden danger lurking, of making a slip up, while putting up a false front of friendship. There are trades on the table, tiles, while there were also favours being traded verbally.

Anyway, there's so much I can talk about the movie, but I'll just focus on the main point I guess. Mr Yee's and Mrs Mak's relationship. I thought the sex was a very integral part of the movie. Mrs Mak summarizes it near the end of the movie by her outburst while reporting. She talked about how Mr Yee was getting to her, not only physically, but mentally. How their sex may have been painful, bleeding, yet neither would ease up, or relent, until neither could stand it any more. And through the progressions of the sex, you can see that the relationship in bed, went from Mr Yee over Mrs Mak, to a relationship of equals.

Instead of Mrs Mak being a sexual tool, (as alluded to in Mrs Mak commenting that Mr Yee wishes to make her a whore when he brought her to the Japanese quarters) Mr Yee saw Mrs Mak as an equal (symbolized by the diamond ring), and more than a whore.

Their relationship was one where both grew younger, more emotionally close, as they got better acquainted. Yet, their relationship also paralleled the sex they were having. There was already a limit to how close they could have gotten, due to their job nature, just like how sex has a limit to how close you can go. And the whole relationship depended on this.. dance before the orgasm. Because the cathartic orgasm would lead to the end of the relationship/sex. And that's why the dance at this limit was so draining, both emotionally and physically.

Mr Yee had a very simple view of the occupation. He just wanted to stay alive, and be with Mrs Mak. On the one hand, he was this charming lover, this rich man, pre war, but on the other hand, every day he had to torture other people, in order to stay alive. (he knew he was being watched). Mrs Mak represented the thing he looked forward to most, the normal life he once had, and when she died, you could see in the final scene, his life draining from his face.

What is love? But dancing at the edge?
What is love? But making oneself vulnerable to certain loss?

posted by Downhere. @ 9:34 pm