Lust, Caution, and Tony Leung's Eyes

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Interview with Ang Lee, Wang Leehom, Tang Wei and James Schamus
Los Angeles red carpet premiere
October 3, 2007

Article and Interview by Brian Hu
Video edit by Oliver Chien

At the Los Angeles premiere for Ang Lee's new film Lust, Caution, reporters (especially the Chinese-language ones) couldn't stop asking the acclaimed director about the negative reviews of the film from the English-language media. Lee and producer/co-writer James Schamus came prepared with answers. Their seemingly coordinated counter-argument was that, yes, there were some high-profile pans (notably, in the New York Times and Variety), but that on the whole, American critics liked it (66% at last check of Rotten Tomatoes).

More than that, they felt compelled to explain the bad reviews. The film's inherent "Chinese-ness" was a typical answer, especially when speaking to the Chinese press. For instance, Lee argued that the film came natural to Chinese audiences and then resigned to the fact that "crossing-over" to the West would be a major challenge. Or as actor Wang Leehom puts it: "The nerves that it hits on are poignant to the Chinese audiences all around the world."

But there are several problems with this explanation. First, the film's inscrutable Chinese-ness seems a strange, belated excuse given that so many "Chinese" films have already crossed over in the U.S., including Lee's own Eat Drink Man Woman and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It also suggests that only Chinese people can understand China, which is obviously not true. But these statements are especially confounding given that Lee has made a career of blurring the boundaries between the Chinese center, the diasporic Chinese, and "the West."

Lust, Caution is no exception. Part of what makes it so interesting is that it shows Chinese people at the crossroads of the rest of the world: between Japanese aggression, Euro-American cultural goods, and the "global city" of Hong Kong. It's a film of many accents, dialects, and languages. The Tang Wei character slips between Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and English without hesitation. There is a sense that in times of world war and economic imperialism, identities become fluid -- a major theme in a film that chronicles the underworld of actors, secret agents, and border-crossers.

 So is there a better explanation for why the film has gotten bad press in the States? One is that mainstream American critics didn't have the patience for a 158 minute art film. The most obvious example came from Hollywood Reporter critic Ray Bennett who began his review: "Ang Lee's lugubrious spy epic Lust, Caution brings to mind what soldiers say about war: that it's long periods of boredom relieved by moments of extremely heightened excitement." Mr. Bennett: have you never seen a Taiwanese art film? Hell, have you never seen the similar Notorious, one of Hitchcock's understated thrillers?

At the premiere, Schamus vindictively (and with much reason) singled out such critics for their laziness: "If you don't like our movie, that's perfectly fine, that's your job. Sometimes, however, I have to object against a certain amount of ignorance, that, when accompanied by smugness and an unwillingness to see what you're trying to do, I have to object to….When somebody is too lazy to even go back and see who Eileen Chang was and what was really going on in Shanghai and how the politics and sexuality of it figure into Chinese culture, then I feel like, ‘Well, maybe you should get another job.'"

On that, I wholesomely agree. It's disconcerting that even the positive reviews of the film tend to single out the film's "visual beauty" as its primary asset, and not the film's remarkable treatment of 20th century Chinese history.

So there are in some ways barriers to entry. But for me, the primary barrier is not history, but something altogether more important: more cinematic, more integral to unlocking the film's visual and narrative pleasures. That is, of course, Tony Leung's eyes.

Leung has been in the Chinese film industry for decades now. He was a staple of 1990s Hong Kong cinema, where he starred in classics such as Hard Boiled, Chungking Express, and Happy Together. He's probably at the height of his powers now, bringing elegance to films as diverse as In the Mood for Love, Hero, and Infernal Affairs. He's also considered the greatest of all working Chinese actors, and his eyes are frequently cited as the chief reason for that. Salon critic Stephanie Zacharek put it best: "Leung's eyes betray everything and nothing: Other actors may seem most vital when they're playing ‘happy' or ‘funny,' but Leung's velvet-brown eyes can telegraph whole chapters of feeling with a single glance -- even their despair twinkles with life."

For me, what made the second half of Lust, Caution so mesmerizing was the interplay of glances between Leung and co-star Tang Wei. And much of appreciating that choreography of looks has to do with understanding the history of Leung's "electric eyes," as Tang puts it in an interview.

There's a specific moment when the battle of the stares begins. It's at a mahjong table hosted by a Mrs. Yee (Joan Chen). Amongst her guests is Wong Chia Chi (aka. Mrs. Mok) (Tang Wei), a spy whose mission it is to seduce the double-crossing husband Mr. Yee (Tony Leung) so that her collaborators can catch, then assassinate him. The characters communicate on two levels. Through speech, they trade pleasantries, politely discussing mahjong and gossip. But their true intentions are spoken with their eyes. Mrs. Mok gives Mr .Yee some fashion advice and invites him to call her to set up a tailoring appointment. She begins to write down her telephone number, and in a sudden frenzy of gazes, Mrs. Yee sees what she's doing and blurts with a smile, "I have your number already." Almost simultaneously, Mrs. Mok averts the gaze of both Yees, then sneakily places her telephone number within view of Mr. Yee, who predictably, steals a glance.

From that point on, seduction and war intermix in a crossfire of gazes. And the bedroom is the primary battleground. In the first of the much-publicized sex scenes, watch how Mrs. Mok aims her eyes, however amateurly, at Mr. Yee's heart, trying to gain the upper hand. And watch how Mr. Yee stares back; those eyes are so impregnable they're hostile. They contain his many contradictions. He lusts for her, maybe even loves her, yet he's cautious and ready to pounce if the need arises. For all that's been said about the corporeal geometries of the sex scenes, I found myself focusing mostly on their facial expressions: how Mr. Yee's eyes slowly begin to reveal his lowered defenses with each subsequent bedroom encounter. And in Mrs. Mok's eyes, we sense fatigue, resignation, and deep sadness about being in the arms of her enemy. So much of the film's tension is contained in their dampened eyes, enveloped in a dizzying array of glistening limbs and torsos.

So much of the tension is built on seeing Tang, the first-film actress, take on Leung, the veteran with the magical peepers. The actors' bios fit the characters well: Mrs. Mok is the young warrior, taking on an enemy that has already thwarted many a two-faced floozy. What makes Leung's gaze so powerful in that first sex scene is our appreciation of Leung's mastery of his ocular instruments. This isn't Leung lazily doing his usual puppy-dog stare; it's not the glimmer of decency his eyes shot at the end of Infernal Affairs, as if to remind audiences that he's the good guy. It's Leung doing what he does best in a completely new way. Here, those eyes display pure evil's window of vulnerability. According to Tang Wei, Ang Lee had to put a leash on Leung's usual trickery. "The director had Tony Leung repress the urge to use those ‘electric eyes' we often see from him. So what he depicted was completely from the character. It's all a performance." It's that appreciation for Tony Leung's performance that makes Mr. Yee's gaze ever more shocking and venomous.

And knowing that Tang, formerly a TV soaps star in China, is probably no match for Leung's famous stare makes her mission even more of an uphill climb. And we feel for her because we too have a weakness for Tony Leung's eyes. How can we hate them? And at the same time, how can Tang, an average person, or Mrs. Mok, an average college student, master that gaze which can only be called godly? To see her come close, flirting, sweating, aching her way to the top, hurts because it carries the weight of not only pre-war Chinese female sexuality but the whole contemporary history of mainstream Chinese cinema. When Tang finally explodes, confessing her anguish to her fellow secret agents, it is a scene that crushes you with the cruel fist of war-time politics, whose sinister face happens to sport the enchanting eyes of Tony Leung.

Of course, even those with an appreciation for Leung and his trademark stare still might not like the film. In a mostly negative review, Manohla Dargis of the New York Times celebrated Leung's performance, but took issue with the fact that his freshman co-star simply couldn't keep up. Stephanie Zacharek, who once wrote a fantastic article called "In the Mood For Leung," was enamored by the second half and the Tang-Leung seduction, but felt the exposition was limp. I don't take issue with either critic, because they understand what Lee was working with and gave the film a fair shot. But those critics who simply complained that the film is overlong and that the second half lacked intensity need to rethink why they're even reviewing this movie.