Hundreds of excited fans lined up outside the Eslite Bookstore on Taipei's Dunhua S. Rd yesterday for a book-signing event held to promote the national opening of the movie Lust, Caution (色,戒) directed by Ang Lee (李安). The movie recently won the Gold Lion Award at this year's Venice Film Festival.
Besides Lee, two actors from the movie, Tang Wei (
Within an hour, the three had signed books and movie posters for approximately 700 fans.
PHOTO: AFP
The event was scheduled to begin at 2:30pm, but fans started showing up on Sunday and spent the night at the bookstore to secure a spot in line.
Uchimura Hiroko, a Japanese student studying at the Mandarin Training Center at National Taiwan Normal University, came with five of her friends and was first in line. She said she came to see Lee and Wang.
"I got the autographs of all three, but what I really wanted was one from Wang Lee-hom," Uchimura told the Taipei Times.
One of the Uchimura's friends was second in line. Uchimura said that she wanted to see Tony Leung (
The movie premiered nationwide at 6pm yesterday.
Lee said at the book-signing event yesterday that he was so worried about the possible audience response that he could not sleep well on Sunday night.
"I spent about a year or so making a challenging and controversial film, which will be shown worldwide," he said. "But the reaction that concerned me the most was the one in my hometown. I'm nervous."
Tang, a rising Chinese actress, said she was happy to visit the director's home country and hoped that the audience would like her character in the film.
"Lee is the best director," she said, "He taught us so many valuable things."
Wang also said he was honored to work with Lee and learned so many things from him. He described Lee as his "teacher, master, director and principal."
Politicians, including Government Information Office Minister Shieh Jhy-wey (
Ma told the press yesterday that he looked forward to seeing the film.
Adopted from a 1950 short novel by Chinese writer Eileen Chang (
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