That's more or less the way it goes with the rest of Lust, Caution too. Everything about the movie looks right, and all the necessary plot points are on the screen, and yet the feeling isn't quite there. Lee and his regular screenwriting team of James Schamus and Wang Hui-Ling—adapting a story by Eileen Chang—delve deep into a study of World War II-era Shanghai and Hong Kong society, taking in the Chinese aristocracy's complicity with their Japanese invaders, the idealism of the student resistance, and the stamp of Western colonialism that has everyone dressing, eating, and conversing like Londoners. At first, Wei and her young rebels treat the prospect of luring and assassinating a traitor as a theoretical act, a lot like the agit-prop plays they stage as part of their university's theater department. Then they step on the wrong toes, and have to grow up in a hurry, under a barrage of body-blows.
Conceptually, Lust, Caution has been thoroughly thought-through, down to every lipstick stain Wei leaves on her teacups. And maybe that's what keeps the film from becoming truly affecting. Lee presents two people who get something very specific out of a relationship built on deceit, danger, and pain, but unlike with his Brokeback Mountain, which made fleeting moments of pleasure and freedom look like something worth risking scorn and even death for, Lee has a hard time conveying exactly what draws Wei and Leung together. He does better when he leaves the bedroom and returns to the increasingly cramped and sweaty offices of outmatched revolutionaries. What passes for relatable emotion in Lust, Caution comes through in mounting frustration that explodes into anger, and the revelation that once you lift a knife, it's hard to stop stabbing.
