Ang Lee's Lust Caution Wins Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival

[AngryABCGirl]

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSL084088920070908

By Mike Collett-White and Silvia Aloisi

VENICE (Reuters) - Taiwanese director Ang Lee's sexually explicit spy thriller "Lust, Caution" was the surprise winner of the top award at the Venice film festival on Saturday, just two years after he won with "Brokeback Mountain".

The movie is a World War Two thriller set in Shanghai featuring long and sometimes violent sex scenes which Lee has hinted were real.

The verdict means Asian directors have won the Golden Lion on the Lido waterfront for the last three years.

The Silver Lion for best director went to U.S. film maker Brian De Palma, whose "Redacted" shocked audiences with its brutal reconstruction of the real-life rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers in 2006.

Taiwan-born Lee told the glitzy red carpet prize ceremony that "Lust, Caution" took him to "some very difficult places.

"I have invited you to come along with me and in the end to stay down there with me ... You are the seven samurais, I needed your help," he added, addressing the seven-member jury.

The film is Lee's return to the theme of forbidden love after gay cowboy hit "Brokeback", but this time the setting is the teeming streets of 1940s Shanghai.

The film centers on a group of revolutionary students bent on killing a powerful political figure who collaborates with occupying forces during the Sino-Japanese war.

First-time actress Tang Wei portrays the young woman who agrees to ensnare the sinister figure, played by one of Asia's biggest screen stars, Tony Leung.

The sometimes violent sex scenes between them were a major talking point in Venice, and Lee hinted to reporters that they were real.

POLITICAL CINEMA

The main competition line-up of 23 movies was strong on political cinema, with two U.S. entries tackling the war in Iraq alongside pictures about migrant workers in Britain, police brutality in Egypt and corporate corruption in New York.

De Palma said he was inspired by U.S. soldiers' blogs, journals and home-made videos posted on the Internet from Iraq.

"This war is not going to be over quickly, and the more we can show what's actually going on from the voices that come across the Internet, the better informed the American public will be," he said. "Hopefully if they someday see the pictures, they may be out on the streets like we were in the 1960s."

Tunisian-born director Abdellatif Kechiche's immigration drama "La Graine et le Mulet" ("The Secret of the Grain") was the pre-award favorite for the Golden Lion, but took away one of two runner-up jury prizes.

Todd Haynes, one of six U.S. productions in competition, scooped the other runner-up slot with "I'm Not There", his conceptual biopic about singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.

In a bold piece of casting, Australian-born Cate Blanchett was one of six performers to play the singer at various stages of his life, and it paid off when she was named best actress in Venice.

Hollywood star Brad Pitt was the surprise winner of the best actor award for his portrayal of legendary outlaw Jesse James in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford".

His co-star Casey Affleck, who played James' killer Ford as a creepy social misfit, had been a frontrunner for the prize along with Tommy Lee Jones for his lead role in Paul Haggis' moving Iraq-related drama "In the Valley of Elah".

Neither Blanchett nor Pitt was at the ceremony, but both had messages read on their behalf.

Blanchett's co-star Heath Ledger said: "I am sorry I can't be standing up here, throwing my arms around Todd, weeping in public and behaving just like a woman."

Asked to explain controversial choices, in the best film and actor categories particularly, jury president Zhang Yimou said: "Even if we had all the force and power of heaven we would not have been able to give a verdict that would please everybody."

[Banana]

Not surprising at all though I am surprised that Ang Lee and the studio won't edit any parts out in order to get an R rating rather than an NC-17.

Then again, I believe it'll have the opposite effect in keeping people away. It's like those ratings for violence and sex they put on video games; it screams to the kids "You want this!"

[haplesshobo]

Not surprising at all though I am surprised that Ang Lee and the studio won't edit any parts out in order to get an R rating rather than an NC-17.

From the stuff I've read, it seems as if the graphic sex scenes and sexual positions are used to show the context of the relationship and how that changes throughout the movies. By editing that out, that would take away from the movie.


Then again, I believe it'll have the opposite effect in keeping people away. It's like those ratings for violence and sex they put on video games; it screams to the kids "You want this!"

On paper, Brokeback Mountain about gay cowboy sex didn't seem like it would be a commercial hit.

But, a NC-17 rating is just the kiss of death. There's hasn't been any NC-17 movies that were able to generate signifigant audiences. Part of the problem is that it restricts advertising and distribution, where a lot of potential sources will refuse to carry anything advertising NC-17. So, even if you wanted to go see it, you couldn't open up your paper and look up what time it was playing.

[TB4000]

Comes out nationwide today, or at least in some select theatres. Ebert liked it.

[lethal]

So the actors were actually having sex with each other? Or was the violence part real and it was just simulated sex?

[Banana]

Cousin watched it and the whole audience was oohhh and gasping.

[AngryABCGirl]

Anyone else see this? It was better and more emotionally affecting than anything I expected.

[SunWuKong]

watched this several weeks ago. think The Lover, now multiply that by 4 or 5. i don't understand how the actors were not having sex.

but sex aside, the story was very well-done.

[Banana]

I downloaded the torrent and I didn't see any sex scenes. I think I got gyped and downloaded the pirated Chinese version.

Those prudes.

[SunWuKong]

I downloaded the torrent and I didn't see any sex scenes. I think I got gyped and downloaded the pirated Chinese version.

Those prudes.

that version must have been cut down by about an hour.

[AngryABCGirl]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/world/asia/19shanghai.html?ex=1355720400&en=9f35234fed4c1cf5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Cinephiles, Pack Your Bags. An Uncut Version Awaits.

December 19, 2007
Shanghai Journal
Cinephiles, Pack Your Bags. An Uncut Version Awaits.
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

SHANGHAI — For weeks now, the ranks of Chinese visitors to Hong Kong have swelled with a brand-new category of tourists: moviegoers.

In a response to the censoring of a film about love and betrayal in Shanghai during the Second World War by the Taiwan-born director Ang Lee, mainland movie fans have flocked by the thousands to Hong Kong to see the full, uncut version of the film, “Lust, Caution.”

The phenomenon of so many people voting, as it were, with their feet has highlighted the public’s rapidly changing attitudes toward the long unquestioned practice of government censorship of the arts, and prompted debate about the way films are regulated in China.

Travelers have made their way to Hong Kong to see movies before, of course, but always in much smaller numbers. Critics and commentators here attribute the interest in Mr. Lee’s movie to a variety of factors, from word of mouth about risqué sexual content stripped from the censored version, to a sensitive political subtext rarely seen in mainland cinema, to the fame of the Academy Award-winning director.

Perhaps most important, though, is the rise of a class of affluent urbanites in China’s rich eastern cities who have grown increasingly accustomed to ever more choice in their lives. “I went to Hong Kong with my girlfriend to see “Lust, Caution” because it was heavily censored here,” said Liang Baijian, 25, a businessman and stock market investor from the Guangxi autonomous region. “We could have bought a pirated copy of the movie here, but we were not happy with the control and wanted to support the legal edition of the film.”

At least one Chinese movie fan has tried to sue the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, which regulates the industry, for deleting some of the film’s content. The director, Mr. Lee, has said that the censored material was regarded as politically unacceptable in Beijing because it reinforced the notion of sympathy between a young Chinese woman and a collaborator with the Japanese occupiers. The lawsuit has been repeatedly rejected by Beijing courts.

Many in the Chinese film industry support the idea of introducing a ratings system like the one used in the United States, which advocates say would lessen the need for outright censorship. The state film administration, however, has resisted.

Other travelers to Hong Kong, meanwhile, said they accepted the rationale of a censorship system in a country of stark disparities in regional income and education, but thought the practice was no longer justified in cities.

“For myself, I strongly object to censorship, but for the country as a whole, I think I can still understand its necessity,” said Yan Jiawei, a graphics designer from Shanghai who saw “Lust, Caution” on a recent business trip to Hong Kong. “It has something to do with people’s educational level. In big cities like Shanghai, people will treat the deleted scenes as art, while those in less developed areas will only think of them as immoral.”

People in the movie industry here said that the fact that a censored “Lust, Caution” was available at all in mainland China demonstrated how far the parameters of the acceptable had broadened since the beginning of China’s reform era over two decades ago. Not long ago, Chinese film was thoroughly dominated by plot lines that heavy-handedly reinforced conventional dividing lines between good and bad, with little room for moral complexities. Unquestioned love of country was a favorite theme.

While many have been drawn to “Lust, Caution” by the allure of sex scenes, which even now run the gamut from tame to nonexistent in most Chinese cinema, still more groundbreaking for a film released here is the notion of a traitor in a leading role depicted as an attractive character instead of a villain. “The country has undoubtedly become more and more open and advanced, and this is the tide of history, which no one can prevent,” said Fang Li, a leading producer. “Compared to a market economy that’s developing so fast, I’ve never seen an industry in China as backward as the film industry, though.”

Mr. Fang said much of the blame for this lay with the censors, a group of mostly elderly people who work in committee and invite critical comment on movies from different branches of government, from the Women’s Federation to provincial governments, all seeking to present their constituency in the best light and to avoid offense. The censors “spend most of their time worrying how not to lose their post,” he said. “They are very careful not to make mistakes.”

Other critics of the system said the country’s censors had become much more careful about leaving fingerprints. Wu Di, a researcher at the China Movie Art Center in Beijing, said that when the director Tian Zhuangzhuang shot “The Blue Kite,” a 1993 movie about the banned topic of the Cultural Revolution, notice was sent throughout the film industry warning companies against hiring him. Mr. Tian framed one of the posters and hung it on his wall, referring to it in interviews with journalists.

“Now, under the so-called harmonious society, they wouldn’t do things so baldly,” Mr. Wu said. Instead of publishing a banning notice, nowadays the same result is achieved with a few phone calls, which leave little trace.

Li Yu, director of the recent film “Lost in Beijing,” which has some nudity, said she tried hard to remain positive, even after being forced to excise several minutes from her movie.

“People who make movies in China understand the situation well, and a lot of them are criticizing the system, saying that censorship prevents them from making good movies, which is partly true,” Ms. Li said. “But I feel the environment is becoming more and more relaxed.”

[Plucesiar]

I downloaded the torrent and I didn't see any sex scenes. I think I got gyped and downloaded the pirated Chinese version.

Those prudes.

You downloaded the version which was released in the mainland. The ones released in Hong Kong and Taiwan are the uncut versions.

I don't know why Rottentomatoes gave it such a bad rating. I recall watching an interview on Youtube with Ang Lee, during which he states that the majority of audiences in Asia found the plot to be too fast, while Westerners found it too slow, and that, especially in America, the people have a hard time relating to the feeling of being the conquered. Maybe the critics just couldn't understand.

[AngryABCGirl]

You downloaded the version which was released in the mainland. The ones released in Hong Kong and Taiwan are the uncut versions.

I don't know why Rottentomatoes gave it such a bad rating. I recall watching an interview on Youtube with Ang Lee, during which he states that the majority of audiences in Asia found the plot to be too fast, while Westerners found it too slow, and that, especially in America, the people have a hard time relating to the feeling of being the conquered. Maybe the critics just couldn't understand.

It's not only that, the movie is really historically specific. Even if you were Chinese, but somehow not familiar with this moment in history, you'd miss out on a lot of details in the film and those historical references that really give the film its feeling and setting, such as the use of all the ROC flags and one really simple one, the bicycle with the three little spinners at the closing of the film, with the one at the upper left red with the other two not being red. It's something hugely significant to Chinese audiences, but someone not looking at that detail might miss it entirely and gives the closing of the film a deeper finality. It's something me and the friend I saw it with were talking about for awhile, and at least it deeply resonated with us, her an HK immigrant and me being Taiwanese.

[Banana]

Wait, what ARE the three spinners about?