jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Marcy already reviewed Ang Lee’s latest, so I’ll limit myself to one point: Lust, Caution is continuing evidence that unsimluated sex is making inroads into mainstream films and more traditional styles and genres. Hardcore fucking in serious movies started out, of course, with the French (Romance) and pretentious art movies both domestic (Brown Bunny) and international (Battle in Heaven, 9 Songs). Then came Shortbus, which I consider a watershed movie because it was the first to successfully integrate real sex into a relationship comedy. Likewise, Lust, Caution, an otherwise old-fashioned spy drama with surprising turns, absolutely relies on graphic sex as a decisive element for both plot and character. The story simply wouldn’t add up if we hadn’t seen what happens between Tony Leung and Wei Tang during the NC-17 scenes. Lust, Caution opens today.

Se, jie. Ang Lee, 2007. ***

The first two acts of this W. Somerset Maugham adaptation are fantastic: Naomi Watts plays a woman who marries stodgy bacteriologist Ed Norton out of desperation and cheats on him with Liev Schreiber as soon as they arrive at his home in Shanghai. To punish her and himself, Norton takes her into the interior, to a village ravaged by cholera. The way the two steer their wrecked relationship through the lush landscape stalked by death is terrific–it’s sort of a grown-up version of Battle Royale, in which the stakes of love are ratcheted up to 11: if you leave me, you’ll die a grisly death. Toby Jones (Truman in Infamous) provides the cynical but helpful foreigner, and there are nuns.

I was less fond of the third act, in which Chekhov’s Law is adhered to much too slavishly: if there’s cholera around, somebody’s gonna get it! Still, The Painted Veil is big classic Hollywood cinema, splendidly engaging, marvelously acted and shot, sumptuous and emotional. The real mystery is why this film, far better than The Departed and most of the other nominees, didn’t get any kind of attention at Oscar time. In decades past, this would have been exactly the kind of thing the Academy would’ve gone gaga over. As a sign of how much times as changed, the The Painted Veil wasn’t even technically released by a major studio but by their “indie” distributor Warner Independent. It was drowned out in December’s mad movie rush, and now the official site is hocking the DVD as “just in time for mother’s day!”

The Painted Veil. John Curran, 2006. ***

• Rotten Tomatoes: 75%

They call it “the Chinese Cinema Paradiso,” and in a way, that’s all you need to know. Electric Shadows tells of two kids growing up during the Cultural Revolution, watching outdoor movies and hanging around the projectionist’s booth. Their scenes are well-handled and sweet, and the little girl’s mother is a lot easier on the eyes than Philippe Noiret. Electric Shadows is moving if you’re in the mood,  a tad sentimental if you’re not–but you could do a whole lot worse than hang out with these kids for a couple hours.

Meng ying tong nian. Xiao Jiang, 2004. ***

[tags]movies, film, 3 stars, china, kids, philippe noiret, xiao jiang[/tags]

Liked this much better than the previous two by Zhang Yimou, Hero and House of Flying Daggers. Perhaps seeing it on the huge screen at Alice Tully Hall helped. This was the New York premiere with Gong Li and Zhang Yimou in attendance. They said a few words via an interpreter who botched Gong Li’s comments but it didn’t matter–we just wanted to gawk at her looking tall and beautiful in an amazing dress. I’d seen her once before, in Cannes, but I was much closer this time, and she looked almost superhuman. (Other celeb sightings that night: Glenn Close, Bill Nighy, Julianne Moore.) Where was I? Oh right, the movie. Like its predecessors, Curse of the Golden Flower is absolutely gorgeous–lavish rainbow-colored interiors, massive tableaux of clashing armies, ninjas descending into a valley from a hundred ropes, etc etc. But for the first time with Mr. Zhang’s wuxia pictures, the melodramatic story appealed to me, too. Opens December 22. We have a photo gallery over at About.com.

Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia. Yimou Zhang, 2006. ***

[tags]zhang yimou, gong li, 3 stars, china, historical, wuxia, film, chow yun-fat, lincoln center, glenn close, bill nighy, juliette moore[/tags]