Review: Ang Lee follows up his massively successful BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN with LUST, CAUTION – an adaptation of a short story by Chinese author Eileen Chang. Set in Japanese occupied Shanghai, LUST, CAUTION is a story about people during a period of war, although it has absolutely no war scenes in it. Instead, this is a slowly unwinding character piece with touches of melodrama, film noir and some good old Hollywood style visual polish.

LUST, CAUTION is a film of two halves, with a fifteen minute opening 'fragment' thrown in for good measure. The film opens innocently enough with a lively game of mah-jong, during which the wives of several Chinese government employees sit and discuss the work and promotions of their husbands in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. A sense of the world in which these women live begins to build through the game and their gossip – including our introductions to Mrs Mak (played by Wei Tang), Mrs Yee (played by Joan Chen) and Mr Yee (played by Tony Leung). After a suddenly unexplained trip is made by Mrs Mak the film suddenly jumps back to four years earlier than the scenes we have just seen. These opening scenes to LUST, CAUTION don't really give too much away about the story that will follow. Instead they're setting the background for Ang Lee's characters - he's not really interested too much in the fine details of the politics or historical detail of this period of Chinese history - instead he wants us looking at those people. In fine detail. Up close and very personal.

The first half of LUST, CAUTION is fairly easy-going, with its a sense of innocence, colourfulness and romanticism. The narrative begins to slowly grow in the style of an elaborate thriller as the students begin to plot and plan the murder of Mr Yee. This innocence doesn't last long though. With a big change in style at the halfway mark - a brutal act of violence during which both the students and the audience lose any of the romanticism perceived beforehand – LUST, CAUTION makes a turn into darker territory. Peoples' actions are shown to have very real consequences and violence is shown to be messy and scary - far from being simple with a clear-cut moral justification. At this turning point Ang Lees film morphs into a different style of storytelling altogether – a black, noir thriller where no-one is trusted and people live and die by their actions, where people are used primarily for personal and political reasons. While this change in style is certainly necessary, there's also a slightly disappointing aspect to this second half of LUST, CAUTION. Lee isn't interested in following a cat and mouse game of style of the traditional thriller – this is a mental and emotional game, one which is also much harder to portray on the screen. It's lucky that he has two such talented leads to rely on – Tony Leung and Wei Tang - who manage to keep us in touch with where the heads of their characters are - because the already very slow pace of LUST, CAUTION slows down yet another notch.

The second half of LUST, CAUTION is also where the sex scenes begin. Although quite explicit these also manage to be fairly naturalistic – although in the theatre I saw the film in there was a few chuckles at the variance in positions that the couple manage to bend themselves into, and, amusingly, a shocked gasp at the sight of the lead actors testicles on the big screen. Ang Lee probably couldn't take these moments any further than he does without asking his actors to actually have sex, but luckily they also have their place in the film. All too often a film will come to a crashing standstill while the 'sex scene' plays out - in LUST, CAUTION they are integral to the plot, the characters and Lee's study of human connections. While he may well have been able to get his point across with less explicit images, Lee shows an unwillingness to compromise his storytelling – the sex is as unflinching as the violence, and for that LUST, CAUTION feels braver than it would have been without it - more willing to face its uncomfortable subject matter head on.

In LUST, CAUTION not only does Ang Lee return to his reoccurring themes of people struggling to 'find' themselves in difficult circumstances (usually society), here he also seems fascinated with just how people turn on those that they once regarded as 'their own kind', questioning exactly what it means to be for or against a particular person for what they believe in and stand for. He manages to push this to the most personal level that he possibly can – its a cat and mouse game of feelings, where neither person seems to know exactly what the other person is feeling because they don't know themselves. It's interesting stuff, although these are pretty miserable people here.

LUST, CAUTION has a very polished look which manages to gives it a Hollywood feel. This is in the classic sense of the word – everyone looks great, the clothes, costumes, hairstyles and sets are pretty impressive. Its therefore quite very stylised looking film – visually this reminded me of the films of Wong Kar-wai – and for a story which is partly concerned with the importance, and deceitfulness, of appearances it's very fitting. Lee drives this theme of appearance home in as many different ways as possible: the Chinese actors on stage, the dressing up and 'playing' people in the real world, the fashions of the rich wives and the uniforms of the army and government officials – before quite literally stripping the two central characters off to their skin for its bunch of sex scenes.

A stony-faced Tony Leung isn't given too much to do for the first half of the film, but he comes to the fore in the second half of the film which narrows down on Mrs Mak and Mr Yees relationship. It would be too easy to chalk Tony Leung's performance as just 'another great one' from this incredible actor, but as good as Wei Tang is (and she's pretty astounding really), it's Leung who gives it an extra sense of gravitas. His performance as Mr Yee may well be – for the most part – uncomfortably restrained, but Leung manages to inject real authenticity into a cold man who seems to be struggling to find his heart beneath his work and duties. Both Wei Tang and Tony Leung are portraying truly miserable people in LUST, CAUTION but they both give performances that work emotionally - even if that emotion is deep hurt and pain. They're both totally uninhibited on screen here, not least because of the nudity, but in the way they appear to be wide open on an emotional level between each other.

LUST, CAUTION isn't actually an easy film to like. Sure it looks gorgeous throughout, but its characters are so unlikeable that you feel like you're being kept at an arms length from the emotional engagement. It is however for this that that the film works at times very well, while also keeping a sense of that distance – it's exactly the way the onscreen characters are treating each other. What this means is that its two and a half hours uncomfortable company – in fact its only as the film reaches its conclusion that we start to feel any real connection with these people at all – a tragedy in narrative terms, but a triumph in the filmmaking.