As for Wang, played by Wei, he identifies with her because: "it seems that only by pretending, by getting far away from reality, she can reach her true self ... to touch the real you that you try to cover up."
"For this project, I had to strip down and get to the heart of the darkness in some way," he says. His instinct, he says, as he filmed Leung and Wei making love was to look the other way. "I don't make pornography, so when you get down to that, it is very painful to shoot. You fight with your moral sense. You are deeply confused. It is embarrassing to coach the actors through it - to verbalize and to give indications. You are revealing your secrets when you are shooting like that." The sex scenes were shot on a closed set with only four people present - the couple, the director and the cinematographer.
Lee defends the sex scenes as being utterly integral to the film. Yes, it is inevitable that the scandal surrounding these scenes will dominate discussion of the movie. "That bothers me. It gives me sleepless nights."
At a press conference earlier in the day, he had fielded the sex questions patiently enough. Did they really do it? To Lee, that isn't the right question. What is important is that the audience has to believe in the scenes. Look at the eyes, not the bodies.
In the end, though, Lee's real preoccupation isn't the sex. Nor is it the politics. Nor is it the chance to bring back to life an era in Chinese history that is in danger of being forgotten. Like Brokeback Mountain, it is an emotionally charged story of a forbidden love. Lust, Caution may begin as an espionage thriller in which the politics and social history are foregrounded. By the final reel, though, it has turned into a full-blown weepie. At its core, this is a film about romantic obsession - "doomed, impossible romantic love."
The middle-aged director, who is happily married, grounded and emotionally stable, just can't help but be drawn to tales of amour fou.
"After Brokeback and this one, I do believe deeply inside that I am a romantic," Lee admits. "I was never romantic in real life. That is why I have to make movies about it."
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