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Article - Ang Lee & some Tony

 
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 9:58 pm    Post subject: Article - Ang Lee & some Tony

Lee leads Asian invasion of Western cinemas

Cynthia Webb, Contributor, Gold Coast, Australia

Ang Lee recently won his second Golden Lion for best film at the 2007 Venice Film Festival, for his newest film Lust, Caution (Se, Jie).

In 2005 his groundbreaking Hollywood-made film, Brokeback Mountain also won this prestigious award as well as an Academy Award.

In Lust, Caution love is used as a weapon of war, and is a cruel illusion. A young woman has a Mata Hari-type assignment, to seduce and destroy a high-level official who is collaborating with the enemy. The setting is Shanghai, early 1940s, during the time of the Japanese invasion of China. We've heard the saying "All's fair in love, and war," and this situation is both.

Lust, Caution features some of the most explicit sex scenes ever to appear in an American film from a top-line Hollywood director. The Motion Picture Association of America's censorship board has given it an NC-17 rating (children 17 and under not admitted).

This has always been thought of as inflicting death at the box office. However, Ang Lee refused to cut the film, preferring to keep his work of art intact, and suffer the consequences.

However, for the film's release in mainland China -- a nation with no ratings system -- Lee has supervised the cutting of 30 minutes from the 156-minute original version. He preferred to do it himself, rather than have censor's scissors "massacre" his movie. Clearly, it must mean a lot to him that the film be seen in China.

It has been announced that Taiwan will release the uncut version, with an R rating.

Lust, Caution is based on a short story published in 1979 by Eileen Chang, a Chinese woman who fled Communism. It tells of a young woman's discovery of her own sexuality and was partly based on real events, containing echoes from her own life experiences. When Ang Lee first read it, he thought it would be impossible to film, but it soon became an irresistible challenge to him.

Lust, Caution stars Tony Leung Chiu Wai (a major film star in Asia) as a Chinese official who is collaborating with the Japanese, and newcomer Tang Wei as his beautiful seductress.

The respected actress Joan Chen, and another newcomer to film, Wang Lee-Hom, also star in this film, which is due for release by Focus Features on Sept. 28.

Tony Leung has starred in Hero, In the Mood for Love, 2046 and Infernal Affairs.

It is reported that Lee verbally coached the actors through the love scenes while shooting on a closed set. During a recent interview in Venice, Tony Leung said that working with Ang Lee was a massive challenge.

"He is very demanding and very strict on the set. Ang helped me a lot. He wanted to have a new Tony Leung, so I had to give up everything that I was used to.

"I tried to work on my body language, I tried to walk like the people of that period of time, and I changed my voice and the expression of my eyes. Sometimes when you get into a character you like to enjoy the character, but he will never let you do that.

"When you think you have reached his standard, he will always give you a new height to reach the next day, and this is painful, but I enjoyed it very much."

Much talent, many genres

Perhaps a lot of the new receptivity of Western audiences to Asian cinema can be attributed to Ang Lee's hugely successful film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), which won four Academy Awards including Best Foreign Language Film and is the highest-grossing foreign language film in the U.S.

It was loved by both critics and audiences around the world -- two sides who do not always see eye-to-eye. It broke down some of the resistance to subtitles, and made audiences familiar with Asian subjects and stars.

Ang Lee was born in Pingtung, Taiwan, on 23 October, 1954. His parents fled the mainland in 1949. He has been living and working in the U.S. since the mid-70s when he arrived there to study.

His early films made in the U.S. were in Chinese. Pushing Hands (1992), The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (1994) explored cultural and generational differences, and featured stories about Chinese people living in the U.S.

Then he surprised many by making a film of the Jane Austen novel, Sense and Sensibility, from a script written by one of its stars, Emma Thompson. This film was so "British" it was very hard to believe a Chinese/American director was its director.

Next, he turned his attention to the American milieu with The Ice Storm (1997), an unsettling satire of American family life in 1973, about unraveling cultural and moral standards, set during the time of the Watergate scandal when many Americans felt disillusioned and confused.

He then tried the Western genre -- horses and wide-open spaces -- in Ride With the Devil, a Civil War story. In 2003, another U-turn, he tackled The Hulk, based on a well-known comic strip. But his version, more of a sensitive examination of the father-son relationship, misfired with the comic book reader set.

He saw the Hulk's tragedy. He is interested in people who are up against overwhelming forces, threatening their own personal needs. During his directing career he has tackled an amazing variety of genres, always bringing his own signature to the subject -- there is so much "heart" and compassion for humanity.

It came through powerfully in Brokeback Mountain in 2005. This very touching film about gay love in repressive times won many major international awards.

Lust, Caution Lee has returned to his own culture, working in the Mandarin language. "From time to time I have to go back to it to get something off my chest. " ... making a Chinese film is more tiresome for me. I carry the whole movie on my shoulders. It is harder to see the subtext behind it. It's more personal and harder to make art of it".

Lee has dedicated Lust, Caution to the late Swedish director Ingmar Bergman whom he met during the shooting, and who died on July 30th this year. Lee is already at work on his next film, A Little Game.


http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20070923.P26&irec=26
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