speed it nearly put me to sleep despite its graphic sex scenes and wish
to get me emotionally involved in the horrors of the occupation.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Taiwanese-born Ang Lee’s (”Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”/”Brokeback
Mountain”/”Hulk”) less than captivating spy and kinky boudoir story is
set during the WW II-era of Japanese-occupied Shanghai that spans the late-’30s
and early-’40s; it’s based on a 54-page short story that Eileen Chang wrote
beginning in the 1950s and was not finished until the ’70s. The uneven
script is by Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus, and it’s a Chinese language
film demanding English subtitles. Its major faults are that it spends too
much time going into detail of bourgeois Chinese married ladies playing
mahjong and chugs along at such a slow speed it nearly put me to sleep
despite its graphic sex scenes and wish to get me emotionally involved
in the horrors of the occupation. Middlebrow director Lee just didn’t instill
this political dramatization with the requisite passion to crossover to
this viewer, as this one proves to be one of his lesser efforts.
It opens in occupied Shanghai in 1942 and flashes back to 1938. Wong
Chia Chi (Tang Wei) is a shy, abandoned university student whose father
fled China to England. She goes along with a friend who volunteers to join
a drama troupe started by the charismatic and zealous patriotic Kuang Yu
Min (Wang Leehom). His radical plan is to assassinate Mr. Yee (Tony Leung),
a powerful political figure (head of the secret police) and cunning Chinese
businessman who is collaborating with the Japanese. Wong is recruited to
pose as a rich woman of leisure married to a Hong Kong import-export businessman
named Mak. Through connections she’s invited to play an ongoing mahjong
game with Mrs. Yee (Joan Chen) and her materialistic-minded shrewish lady
cronies. Her handsome, steely-eyed hubby, Mr. Yee, has earned a rep as
a ruthless supporter of the puppet government, who is going after the resistance
with a sadistic vengeance. Wong, using her newly gained contacts and acting
experience, is to lure the ever-cautious Mr. Yee, who goes nowhere without
his bodyguards, into an area where her comrades can kill him. The virgin
Wong loses her cherry to prepare for her sexual encounters with Mr. Yee,
but is not prepared for how kinky, controlling and demanding are his erotic
wants. This scenario goes on for a needlessly long 158 minutes, as Wong
tries to get over as a role player and must deal with being shagged–the
sexual intimacy of the story overcomes all else and the film flounders
trying to say something that really doesn’t mean much at this point about
relating sex to politics–that love can be a corrupting force. Aside from
the extended depiction of rough sex to keep one’s interest aroused, there
are left only dead spots when leaving the erogenous zones. In the end,
this so-called steamy melodrama, more soft-core porn than arthouse fireworks,
is too cold to warm the heart and too unsatisfying to be more than a cautionary
tale about being compromised by one’s lust.