Lust, Caution

"Or, Black Book with 80% less disturbing fascism. “If you pay close enough attention, nothing is trivial”, broods Tony Leung in an early scene. That might well be the best summation anyone’s ever given for Ang Lee’s films, and it’s certainly true for Lust, Caution. A director whose body of work is marked by careful attention to the fragile ground between public behaviour and private frustration, Lee here treads well-worn ground."

"Too much caution and too little lust squeeze much of the dramatic juice out of Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, a 2?--hour period drama that's a long haul for relatively few returns."

"Another resounding success for Ang Lee, whose film-making has such mass and substance. His movies are like huge, exciting new buildings for us to gather round and wonder at."

"The sex scenes -- intense, affecting and emotionally raw -- are the best thing about this frustratingly limp movie."

"It might have been better to have played it straight — small instead of epic, chronological instead of deconstructed — and to give his characters some explicitness in history instead of the bedroom."

"A beautiful but lengthy and self-indulgent affair..."

"A beautifully rendered, long, drawn-out but ultimately very satisfying story of betrayal and revenge in an uneasy setting of wartime paranoia."

"A stern, steely film that requires considerable patience, but stick with it for long enough and you'll be rewarded with a mesmerising study in emotional cruelty."