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Ang Lee Discusses Lust, Caution, Sex, Ratings and Politics

 
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 03, 2007 9:21 am    Post subject: Ang Lee Discusses Lust, Caution, Sex, Ratings and Politics

Today is Wednesday, October 3, 2007 - 10:09 AM (PST)

Ang Lee Discusses Lust, Caution, Sex, Ratings and Politics

It's a full bag of goodies considering the interview was only 15 minutes

By Brad Brevet | Tuesday, October 2, 2007

The focus for Lust, Caution has been lost amidst far too much talk about explicit sex scenes and an NC-17 rating. By this I mean the wrong questions are being asked in interviews with director Ang Lee as he has made a politically charged film that happens to have rather explicit sex portrayed by the two lead actors Tony Leung and newcomer Tang Wei. So, when I learned I was going to have the chance to sit down with the director and chat about the film I scoured the Net to see what had already been said.

You have to remember, he has talked this film to death. I was talking to him after his film had already been shown at the Venice Film Festival where it won the Golden Lion. It opened to record breaking numbers in Hong Kong and Taipei where it was shown unedited and it was already in one theater over in NYC where it cashed in with $63,918. I fully expected everything to have been said and done. Guess what, it wasn't.

I didn't want to talk about how he was working with Tony Leung. I didn't want to talk about working with Tang Wei in her first film. We already know that yes, the sex was real, let's move on.

Where the interviews are lacking are not in asking how it was to make the film, but the results of the film being made. Lust, Caution is a political movie no matter how you look at it. It's political in the fact that it was shot in China. It is political in the fact that Lee is portraying a time in China when his parents actually lived there prior to fleeing in 1949 following the communist victory. It is political in the fact that it earned an NC-17 rating while the ultra-violent Eastern Promises sits comfortably with an R-rating.

It is political as USA Today points out in that Japanese brutality and Chinese collaboration during World War II are unpopular topics in those two countries. Yet, Lee is releasing a film depicting the time. He told USA Today, "If anything, Japan is in more denial about it than China... They want to forget that it happened. But I don't think history should be forgotten or distorted. It should be dealt with."

As Lee tells me, "It is the first time [anyone has been] allowed to film that regime." These are important details not to be overlooked and he has something to say about it all. Unfortunately, my 15 minutes with him weren't enough. I wanted 45 minutes like I just had with Matt Carnahan, especially when the subject matter is this interesting.

We began with the political side of things and I tip-toed around the subject for a couple of reasons. First off I am a historical idiot as my brain can only hold the minute amount fed to it just prior to the interview. Suffice to say I know that communist China isn't going to be the first country to step up and fully embrace a film telling the story of Wang Jiazhi (Tang), part of a group of Chinese students bent on assassinating Mr. Yee (Leung), a Chinese collaborator with the Japanese occupation in Shanghai during World War II. Yee heads the secret police and when Wang becomes his lover the film takes on a whole new meaning.

When asked how he felt the film would be received in China, and by China I meant China, not just the community, he replied, "I don't know, I think they are yearning for a movie like this."

The interesting thing about the film is that the communist aspect is never confronted head on, and Lee admits to leaving communism out of the story but the fact the film is more than just a story of a fateful romance is not lost on the director.

"I am aware that this is highly political material, not only in the political backdrop, but the essence of the point of view, the view of the writer Eileen Chang," he said. "There's a political aspect to it, [Tang Wei] is watching a glorious war of patriotism from a female point of view - a sexual point of view. That's inevitably political. I am loyal to [Chang's] writing, but I am not trying to be an advocate of anything, I just found it interesting."

While I am sure he is not trying to be intentionally political due to how subtle most of the politics in the film actually are, I could only help but wonder where he found the balance between revealing political agendas and the torrid romance.

"As far as I am concerned a lot of my movies are political," Lee said, "but I treat them more like one inevitable element in our lives. It's life I am portraying. So I am not consciously making a political movie, like the communist movies, to serve a political purpose. It is the other way around, if there are political elements in the story I incorporate that, but this one is really a love story."

The love story is where the film has found its press. Headlines boasted the fact that the film received an NC-17 rating and Lee and Focus Features didn't hesitate in accepting the taboo rating. The highest grossing NC-17 movie ever was Showgirls which brought home $20.3 million so don't expect Lust, Caution to break open any banks. However, for me the biggest question in regards to the NC-17 ratings was not the likes of "Why keep it?" or "Did you consider cutting scenes to get an R?" or even examining the making of the scenes (I know how to have sex and what it entails). I was more curious on Lee's opinion of the rating in general and comparing it to the recently released Eastern Promises, which earned an R-rating despite ultra-violent scenes involving the sawing open of a man's throat, a rather graphic sex scene and the much talked about naked bathhouse scene as Viggo Mortensen reveals all while slamming a knife into the back of a man's head.

How does Lust, Caution compare? Well, you have about three sex scenes, admittedly showing more than you normally see (this isn't just sweaty faces) and a murder involving quite a brutal stabbing. If you are wondering how it compares I would hope American audiences and ratings boards would be far more numb to seeing two people have sex than throats being cut and multiple stabbings, but that is just me.

I recently interviewed David Cronenberg regarding this issue, asking him if it was odd that Lust, Caution got an NC-17 for its depictions of sex while Eastern Promises survived the process with an R. While he hadn't seen Lust, Caution yet he said, "I understand those scenes are pretty much hardcore sex scenes... I know that people like to say that the MPAA is more accepting of violence than they are of sex, but I am not sure that's true. I think it depends on the context of the whole movie..."

Cronenberg goes on to explain to me, "[Eastern Promisesdoes ] have a sex scene that is fairly extreme in as well, not in terms of nudity and hardcoreness, but in terms of psychology where Kirill is watching Nikolai fuck a prostitute. They didn't want us to cut that. My experience has not been what people have been saying."

I am honestly baffled and when I posed the question to Lee he responded as I would have after saying he had no problem with the rating, but "[In] America I think they are too loose on violence," he said. "I think that culturally they make an NC-17 rating equivalent to a porno movie and bad taste. I think that needs to be worked on."

Back in March there was an article in Variety saying that the MPAA was "trying to make NC-17 respectable" but I think Ang has a better idea when he says that need to assure audiences it is a legitimate rating as he says, "They should be tighter on violence and give NC-17 out legitimately, not something that is impossible to reach. They keep stretching it, because they don't want to lose business, so they keep stretching the R-rating way beyond R-rating."

When I described Eastern Promises to Lee, since he had not yet seen it, he replied, "I think there is an imbalance, if NC-17 is a legitimate rating then that movie probably should get an NC-17."

I quickly agreed asking him if the rating system bothered him as a filmmaker, "Not as a filmmaker, but as a person. [Violence] should be guarded and be looked at legitimately the same as sex."

Thanks to only having 15 minutes we didn't get into the "why" of that statement although it would have been a lot of fun because I felt he had a lot more to say. I do agree that it comes down to cultural differences though, but it still shocks me that our culture has a problem with sex more than it does graphic violence. If push came to shove I would much rather live in a society filled with nymphomaniacs than serial killers.

Lee says, "In comparison to Europe, they are shocked by the stabbing scenes. It is a very different culture."

Boiling it all down I don't think NC-17 will ever be viewed as a legitimate rating until there is something "worse" than it or a removal of the R-rating and a couple of additional ratings thrown into the mix between PG-13 and NC-17. Lee has a solid look at it and a positive outlook on the film's future as he says, "At the end of the day I hope it does what it did in Taiwan. [In Taiwan it did] good business, got a rightful rating and sends a message that NC-17 is not equivalent to porno, bad taste movies, it just means for adults. Ideally that's what it means."

Lust, Caution is for adults and a film filled with far more than the explicit sex that has dominated the headlines. After winning a Golden Lion you would think more than just the sexual nature of the film would be discussed. Luckily I have seen it and can add my two cents and I hope more people check it out for the story it has to tell along with the history.

As Lee says, "It's a miracle they let me make it," and he isn't talking about the shooting of the sex scenes folks. For a culture that is so against sex we sure don't mind the discussion of it dominating our local newspaper headlines.

Lust, Caution opened Friday, September 28th, at one theater; the exclusive run is at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in New York City. Additional U.S. theaters and cities will be added on Friday, October 5th. The U.S. release is of the unedited NC-17 version. For more on the film including our review click here.




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