Matt Schiavenza

Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution might be the highest-profile Chinese film to be released internationally in years. Yet within China itself, the full version of the film is prohibited due to its explicit sexual content. Instead, Chinese audiences (both in cinemas and via the country’s ubiquitous pirated DVD shops) saw the truncated version with all of the sex scenes edited out. This was the version I saw when a friend bought me the DVD two or so months ago.

I was impressed enough with the film to want to see it in its entirety, even after one of my friends here downplayed the significance of the sex scenes. She said she found them rather gratuitous, and added that she almost would have preferred the censored version. I still wanted to see for myself. Yesterday, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, I finally got my chance.

And….wow. The sex scenes really made a difference. My friend and I both agreed that without the sex, it would be difficult to understand the degree of emotional intensity between Wong Chia Chi and Mr. Yee, the collaborationist official she slept with in order to set him up to be killed. Indeed, the sex served as a synecdoche of their entire relationship. Yee applies his brutal interrogation tactics in the bedroom, while the subservient Wong, despite her burning hatred for him, still cannot avoid letting him worm into her heart.

It is my understanding that Lee did not intend his sex scenes to be purely erotic- and they weren’t. Eroticism, of course, does not require nudity or explicit sex, and can be expressed in the subtlest gestures that would evade even the strictest Chinese censors. Rather, it is during these scenes when his two main characters are stripped bare of not only their clothes but also their facades, allowing them to act upon their basest instincts. Wong Chia Chi’s entire existence is marked by caution- she must not reveal her real identity. Lust, as Lee presents it, is the yin to caution’s yang, and it is during her trysts with Mr. Yee that she achieves a long-awaited release.

Although my overall impression of the film didn’t change (I liked it both times), I felt relieved that I was able to watch it in its entirety. The censored parts, when included, simply illuminated the film’s emotional relationships with a clearer light.

So why was the original version of the film banned, rather than restricted, in China? The historical content in Lust, Caution is entirely consistent with the government-mandated Chinese interpretation, and the film’s fictional university students (one of whom criticized a foreign play as “bourgeois”) could even be seen as nationalist heroes with a Marxist slant. Obviously, its sexual content renders the film unsuitable for children but does the government really expect the sight of Tony Leung’s bottom or Wei Tang’s breasts would somehow foment disharmony and instability among the nation’s adults?

I write this not as a criticism of China per se, and American culture also has a tortured relationship with sex and nudity, at least in comparison with our more libertine European cousins. But I do think it is worth lamenting that an important film concerning their history cannot be shown in its entirety within China.