By Jennifer Merin

In Lust, Caution, director Ang Lee returns to the Chinese language and his Chinese heritage to explore a time in history experienced by his parents’ generation, taking place in Hong Kong and Shanghai during the period of the Japanese occupation during World War II.

The plot revolves around a young woman who’s recruited for her university’s theatrical productions and subsequently agrees to use her performance skills to seduce and destroy a high-ranking Chinese bureaucrat who’s collaborating with the Japanese.

“This movie is very personal for me. Not only because I’m going back to Chinese-language film. The characters in the movie, I find myself directing them with my personal knowledge, with feelings and things inside of me that I’m not aware of,” explains Lee. “Wong Chia Chi, she’s a performer and that’s how she touches her true self. That’s like me making movies—playing to touch my true self. I identify with Kwang, the student leader, because that’s how I lead my life. And Mr. Yee—that’s the secret self, I don’t know what the hell that is, but he really attracts me. And Chinese actors, they’re totally devoted to the director, take everything you give them. So after a while, I felt the three of us became myself. So it feels very personal.”

“Chinese language film is my cultural root, where the experience is quite personal—unlike here which is an adapted culture. And also I have this will to see what my parents’ generation is. What I was told by my parents was romanticized by them, and things have changed so much that I felt duty-bound to retrieve from my memory what the generation at that time looks like. So, that feels very personal.”

MERIN: As you describe them, the three lead characters sound like they might be different aspects of yourself. Do you feel that way?
LEE: No, I cannot say that. I don’t feel that split personality. And the Mr. Yee part, I don’t even know him, but maybe he’s my darker side. But I’m very attracted to that character.

Each character, for dramatic need, all have to be individuals. You have to reach them; they have to have their own inner conflicts and different dimensions of their own characters. So no, I don’t think I take parts of me—that would be too simple.

You shot in Shanghai. Was it difficult to work there?
I think the Oscar helped me. The Academy Award is respected there, even though they banned the film and cut my acceptance speech. But I think they are proud of me—even if I grew up in Taiwan, in the old-fashioned way. I think a lot of film people tried to make it work.

How did you recreate the city as it was during that period?
We did it by bits and pieces. The city was cooperative, and we used computers to remove some objects, so that’s a big part of it. We had the biggest set—it was two blocks. They invited me to shoot there, and they built everything for me as I mapped out. They’re very proud of it. But I had to dress it out. We spent a lot of time on that—it got me over budget and time.

I wanted to show how hard it was for foreigners at that time—English, Americans and others will be sent to concentration camps, since the war breaks out. To explain to the Western audience why there are so many foreigners there. And to explain to the Chinese audience why there are so few. (He laughs).

You don’t focus much on the Japanese...
This story happened in wartime but is not about physical war. I think it’s important to show the oppression, what happened in Shanghai during those years—very peaceful, prosperous, life goes on and the Japanese keep a kind of polite distance in Downtown area, kept the atrocity in the outskirts. But I have to show their presence—like when the Chinese has to bow. The humiliation. The occupying. The oppression. Even the checkpoint.

But that’s not the most important thing in the movie. The most important thing is the drama between the man and woman—portraying their relationship with the backdrop that China is occupied

Why do you emphasize their sexual relationship?
To me, that is the core emotion and theme of the movie. To me, it’s the ultimate performance. My experience with the actors, how deep they go into it. Sex is performance, after all. And Wong’s such a good actress, she passes the scrutiny of the interrogator.

They’re so frightened, and it’s so real. They have to deny it. I think that’s the movie, the ultimate acting job: body language.
I was in an ideal situation. People would do anything—I would ask anything and it would happen. I got the best actors. I just had something in the back of my head: If I don’t do this, it will be a shame. (He laughs). And it’s what the movie deserves. Otherwise it’s exploiting them.

I shot those scenes in the earliest part of shooting, and they feel honest. Most other sex scenes are about covering what should not be seen. That feels very technical to me. But we didn’t want to do that because sexual honesty is very important to the story, and to me. The actors were willing to try the ultimate performance, so to speak.

It’s not that they can’t talk to each other; they have difficulty to reveal their true desire. I have no difficulty making a movie that communicates with people, but when I say do a naked scene that’s difficult, that’s disconnecting, and I try to connect with that. So it’s all about examining humanity. Smooth situation, you never see the truth. It has to be distorted. Then you feel there’s something not connecting, and let’s face it. I think that’s what my movies like to do.