Review of Lust, Caution (2007)
Seen in 2021.
A college theatrical troupe gets into Chinese resistance against Japanese imperialism ca. 1940. They do badly.
It’s got the nudity of Black Book (2006) and then some, but less violence. More importantly, director Lee relies on the pretty faces of his lead actors to Kuleshov their way through two and a half hours of almost nothing. There’s very little plot, barely a theme, and the set design is perfunctory; I got no sense of how these places looked or felt under Japanese occupation. PRC censors still went to town, but that doesn’t make it subversive.