Tang Wei: The most cruel scene in "Lust and Caution" is not in bed

Pippi Films said

2024-07-12 13:06Published in Jiangsu film creators

Zhang Ailing wrote "Lust and Caution", which lasted for 25 years, and the novel was only more than 10,000 words, but after it was published, it was rated as "traitor literature".

Ang Lee filmed "Lust and Caution", he was sincerely afraid, and bluntly said that "it is very close to his fear, and the taboo is also the deepest".

The film won the Venice Golden Lion Award and the Taiwan Golden Horse Award, but it was defined as a "third-level film".

After 13 minutes of deletion in the mainland, it was allowed to be released, but the audience only seemed to care about those 3 bed scenes.

17 years later, this film is still a topic that people are talking about, with 870,000 people on Douban and a high score of 8.7.

In various forums, many people are still tirelessly looking for the "uncut version".

As long as there is Tang Wei's news, words like "fake drama is really done" in the comment area are always indispensable.

As much as there is a heated discussion about it online, there is a deeper misunderstanding of it.

In fact, "Lust and Caution" is a movie that can be shallow and deep.

To put it simply, others made a meal of dumplings for a pack of vinegar, and Ang Lee made a movie for three bed scenes.

These three bed scenes correspond to the three sentences in Zhang Ailing's novel.

The first bed scene took place around 1 hour and 30 minutes.

The theme is Mr. Yi's taming of Wang Jiazhi.

The original words in the corresponding novel are:

"Power is an aphrodisiac."

The second bed scene takes place 9 minutes later.

The theme is the struggle between Mr. Yi and Wang Jiazhi, which corresponds to Zhang Ailing's famous statement:

"The vagina is the passage to a woman's heart."

The third bed scene occurred around 1 hour and 52 minutes.

The theme is Wang Jiazhi's anti-customer to Mr. Yi.

corresponds to the words at the end of the novel:

"In the end, her feelings for him were so strong that they had nothing to do with any feelings, but they had feelings, they were the primitive relationship between hunter and prey, the relationship between tiger and beast, and the ultimate possession."

The time coordinates are given to you, and the interpretation of the original book is also given to you.

If you just want to see beautiful shots, then the above may already be able to make you satisfied.

But if you're not satisfied, let's talk about the more exciting parts of the movie.

Beneath the skin, they are the same;

Putting on a gorgeous robe, it is a different look.

The times are turbulent, light and dark are intertwined, you come and go, each with a ghost.

In a sense, the confrontations between these men and women on different occasions and the hidden details and metaphors are the "key" to truly solve the mystery of this movie.

01、

The beginning of the deletion

Xu Haofeng revealed in the film review collection "Analects in Light Illusion" that "Lust and Caution" originally had a wonderful beginning.

As soon as Mr. Yi appeared, he personally sentenced the female prisoner.

This bloody opening, at the Venice Film Festival, shocked every audience.

But when it was released later, it was deleted.

The whole taste of the movie has changed.

Mr. Yi in the public version is a decent person at the beginning.

He went from being personable and humorous to becoming the last murderous demon, and the process of blackening is traceable.

It is easier for the audience to accept when watching, but for the characters, there is a lack of ruthlessness.

In the award-winning version, the director announced the "answer" at the beginning -

Mr. Yi is ruthless and does not let go of women.

The whole movie is from the perspective of God, watching how he humiliates Wang Jiazhi mentally and physically.

Because of the beginning of this deletion, all the tenderness that follows, extreme pulling, lip and tooth grinding and treacherous clouds have completely different meanings.

02、

Tony Leung's "action scenes"

Don't get me wrong, Brother Pi has no intention of exploring how brave Tony Leung is in bed scenes, but pays more attention to how he uses his actions to express the character of Mr. Yi.

At that time, the situation in Shanghai was tense, and Ang Lee spent more than 10 million to rebuild Nanjing West Road.

This was the "pig cage walled city" built by Stephen Chow when he was filming "Kung Fu", and it became a purgatory on earth in "Lust and Caution".

Ang Lee uses a lot of overlooking and scrutinizing shots to show the depression on this street.

Monitors with binoculars on buildings, "hat gangs" on the streets, uniformed customers chatting casually in front of cars, even waiters in cafes, drivers in taxis......

All of them looked grim, and the whole of Shanghai presented an atmosphere of slaughter and danger.

All the environment is just to set off Mr. Yi alone.

As soon as Mr. Yi appeared on the stage, the director used lighting to show his complex face, which was dangerous and mysterious, and extremely sexually tense.

Tony Leung wants to play the complexity of Mr. Yi, and he can't rely on expression.

This spy leader is very deep, and his face is like a peaceful lake.

Tony Leung can only rely on inadvertent subtle movements to express the characters.

At the beginning of the film, the four wives are playing mahjong.

Mr. Yi returned to the mansion and the car was parked at the door.

His subordinates had to walk around the car first to make sure that there was nothing unusual around, and then Mr. Yi slowly opened the door near the side of the house.

Get out of the car, get into the house, draw the curtains, all in one go.

This set of sharp actions shows Mr. Yi's cunning and spicy.

Before he went to see the four wives, there was another move—

He deliberately straightened his hair in front of the mirror.

This means that there should be women sitting on the mahjong table, and even all of them are women who have learned bed skills with him.

It shows that Mr. Yi is a master of beauty hunting.

Even in those three bed scenes, Mr. Yi has a lot of "small actions".

In the first bed scene, he plays with belt bondage and whipping.

This is a typical sadomasochistic plot, and it is also the way Mr. Yi usually interrogates prisoners.

The kiss between him and Wang Jiazhi is also like a bite between animals.

Afterwards, Mr. Yi smoked a cigarette and looked at Wang Jiazhi slumped on the bed, as if a hunter had finished harvesting his prey.

In the second bed scene, the two played with the paperclip position.

There's another action here.

Wang Jiazhi wanted to kiss Mr. Yi, but was rudely refused, and this action explained his defensive heart.

Later, when the two are having a good time, the scene switches to the wolfdog shot, and a group of agents patrol the alley with live ammunition.

This is a concrete manifestation of guardedness.

In the third scene, Wang Jiazhi smothered Mr. Yi's eyes with a pillow.

At this time, Wang Jiazhi had a chance to kill Mr. Yi.

Mr. Yi didn't seem to move, but the gun next to the bed was watching all this coldly.

It may seem motionless, but it is thrilling.

In the end, Wang Jiazhi let Mr. Yi go, and Mr. Yi rushed downstairs from the jewelry store, rushed out, and almost flew into the car.

Quiet as a virgin, moving like a rabbit.

Mr. Yi in Zhang Ailing's pen has a "rat appearance", and Mr. Yi, who Ang Lee made up after reading the novel, is actually Zhang Yimou's appearance.

Tony Leung lost 8 kilograms in order to play this role well.

Two months before the start of the shooting, he learned Mandarin and Shanghai mahjong, and when the shooting started, he covered his face with white powder, deepened his eye sockets with black eyeshadow, combed his hair all back, and shaved his hairline.

then pluck out the hair in the middle and back of the forehead, so that the scalp has sharp corners, showing a character temperament similar to Zhang Yimou.

On this basis, he used well-designed movements and relaxed performances to make the spy leader vivid and three-dimensional.

03、

"Mrs. Culture" on the Mahjong Table

The film is set in 1942 in Shanghai, where various forces are entrenched and the political situation is very complicated.

How to represent this situation?

Ang Lee used a 3-minute mahjong scene to shoot it all.

In this mahjong mat, there are 4 women sitting.

Except for Mrs. Mak, a Hong Kong businessman pretended to be Wang Jiazhi, the other three are all family members of high-ranking officials.

They are:

Mrs. Yi, her husband, Mr. Yi, is the head of Wang's puppet government intelligence department;

Mrs. Liang, her husband is a high-ranking official in charge of grain;

Mrs. Ma, whose husband manages traffic, is also of no low status;

Mrs. Liang's Liang is homophonic with "grain", Mrs. Ma's horse is related to traffic, and the director takes great pains.

The general interpretation will simply understand this scene as "the merchant girl does not know the hatred of the country, and she still sings the flowers in the backyard across the river".

Seems to make a lot of sense.

At that time, Shanghai was full of hunger, and the people were struggling to make a living.

But inside Mr. Yi's mansion, there is another world.

The ladies drank afternoon tea and happily rubbed mahjong.

The discussion is about which restaurant's food is more appetizing, whether you will gain weight if you eat too much, and complaining that Hong Kong's Shanghai cuisine is not authentic.

But behind these idle pens, there is another deep meaning.

The "wife bureau" is essentially the second battlefield of political games, and it is by no means just a place to eat, drink and have fun.

The deception on the mahjong table is a microcosm of the situation at that time.

In order to shoot a good mahjong scene, Ang Lee's requirements for actresses are that mahjong must be played familiarly, elegantly, and carelessly.

He invited the assistant of the famous director Li Hanxiang to carefully choreograph a mahjong game, adding the class relations and love and hatred of the four women.

In the end, the 3-minute scene was filmed for 12 days, and it still looks like a hidden mystery.

The jewellery worn by the wives symbolizes status.

Mrs. Yi wears diamonds and has the highest status, followed by Mrs. Liang wears emeralds;

The newcomer, Mrs. Mai (Wang Jiazhi), wears sapphires and has the lowest status.

And Mrs. Ma was a little out of place.

She wears the same diamond ring as Mrs. Yi.

Thinking that Mr. Yi later bought Wang Jiazhi a goose egg powder diamond, it can be inferred that Mrs. Ma and Mr. Yi are also very close.

So a mahjong scene turned into a jealousy between Mrs. Yi and Mrs. Ma, and Mrs. Liang and Mrs. Mai watched the play on the sidelines.

The "eating" and "touching" of mahjong show the swords and swords between women.

For example, several people played mahjong to change seats, and Mrs. Yi and Mrs. Ma competed for the house, showing that Mr. Yi's hostess may change positions at any time.

For example, Mrs. Yi sarcastically mocked Mrs. Ma, saying that her husband was in charge of transportation, and if he didn't go home for three days, he would let you go wild.

"Let go of the wild" is a naked and explicit statement: Don't climb into my husband's bed if you're okay.

For example, Mrs. Yi also said a strange thing, she said that the Hong Kong master and the Sichuan master do not deal with each other.

This Hong Kong master refers to the Hong Kong rich lady Wang Jiazhi pretending to be;

This Sichuan master represents Mrs. Liang, who speaks Sichuanese.

The meaning of this code phrase is that Mrs. Yi wants to win over the two, Wang Jiazhi understood, and took the initiative to give Mrs. Yi the card table loyalty.

For another example, after Mr. Yi came back, Mrs. Liang helped and said that someone finally came to support Mrs. Yi.

This is actually her helping Mrs. Yi tease Mrs. Ma.

When the situation turned into a mess, Mr. Yi joked that diamonds are just stones, don't wear them, you can't play cards.

A joke, but full of threats, the wives immediately stopped.

This mahjong scene is fast-paced, and the tension of the whole film is pulled up.

04、

Did Mr. Yi really fall for the plan, or will he just do it?

Wang Jiazhi used the "beauty trick" in the film to get close to Mr. Yi.

Judging from the final result, she fell into lust and failed.

This also involves a question -

In the face of Wang Jiazhi's intrusion, did Mr. Yi really fall for the plan, or did he just plan it?

In the film, the director did not give a clear answer through the lines.

But we can look at Wang Jiazhi in reverse.

In fact, Wang Jiazhi exposed herself at least three times before the rebellion.

For the first time, Wang Jiazhi participated in the mahjong game as Mrs. Mai.

As everyone knows, this bureau is Mr. Yi's harem party.

As soon as Mrs. Mai appeared, Mrs. Yi already knew the purpose of her trip.

It's just that I'm too busy dealing with Mrs. Ma to clean her up.

At the card table, Mrs. Yi said that she had Wang Jiazhi's phone, but Wang Jiazhi still stubbornly wrote down the number.

Mr. Yi really wrote it down by eating snacks, and this detail has aroused Mrs. Yi's vigilance.

Later, Mrs. Yi wanted to make two suits for her husband, and Wang Jiazhi was busy introducing them, and said casually:

"Mr. Yi likes the kind imported from United Kingdom the most, which is not discounted."

This sentence was overstepping, and Mrs. Yi replied lightly, "Really?" ”

exposed the private relationship between Wang Jiazhi and Mr. Yi in person.

At this point, Wang Jiazhi is already a little transparent.

The second time, Mr. Yi invited Wang Jiazhi to eat Western food.

Wang Jiazhi was very cramped when she held the knife and fork, and when she drank red wine, she pretended to be calm.

Where is the wife of a rich businessman, she is a female college student with poor acting skills.

Mr. Yi has experience in interrogating prisoners, and Wang Jiazhi's haste is the most powerful testimony.

Mr. Yi said to Wang Jiazhi, you are smart, but you are not very good at gambling.

In fact, it is to see through it and not say it, click on her.

Later, Cao Dexi, who was next to Mr. Yi, pierced the window paper and said directly:

"From the very beginning, I felt that something was wrong with you, but I didn't say anything and took my time to see what tricks you were doing."

The third exposure is the three lingering bed scenes.

This is the most direct temptation.

The two of them were in bed several times, and the way Mr. Yi used was to try to capture the past and deliberately hand over the initiative.

Wang Jiazhi is mainly anti-guest, from being tied up, to the two facing each other naked, and finally to the extremely aggressive female superior.

A woman's words can deceive, but physical reactions don't.

At this point, Mr. Yi had calmly handed over his life and death to Wang Jiazhi, but Wang Jiazhi missed the opportunity to strangle him to death in bed.

At that moment, Wang Jiazhi was not only exposed, but even completely fallen.

Wang Jiazhi won the body, but handed over the soul.

05、

The cruelest scene is not in bed.

Everyone is acting, only Wang Jiazhi is serious, her tragedy is doomed from the beginning

The failure of the assassination cannot simply be attributed to Wang Jiazhi's love brain.

From the very beginning, this operation was doomed to failure.

Kwong Yumin, played by Wang Leehom, is the leader of the student organization and the initiator of the assassination, and he is a sincere heart.

But there is a detail in the film.

During the rehearsal of the play, Lai Xiujin proposed to rehearse "A Doll's House", which is Ibsen's famous work.

But Kwong Yumin said, when is it, and I still look at this kind of little bourgeois thing.

This suggests that there is a kind of machismo in him.

Although he can sacrifice everything for the sake of revolutionary ideals, he has a very narrow view of things, has empty heroic feelings, and does not understand human nature.

Wang Jiazhi fell in love with him at first sight, but later understood that his mind was not on his children's private affairs, so he was no longer attached to him.

Later, because of the rehearsal of the drama, he stimulated his patriotism, and turned into a fire-fighting moth to participate in the action, not wanting to become a pawn of Kuang Yumin.

Lai Xiujin is also a member of the student organization.

She and Wang Jiazhi have a crush on Kuang Yumin together, and the two are rivals.

She was completely impure in her revolutionary ideals, a representative of a refined egoist, and all her motives were to stumble her rivals.

Wang Jiazhi charged ahead, and people like her would flee immediately.

There is another detail in the film.

When Kwong Yumin told the assassination plan, one of the students recited the poem, "Be generous and be a prisoner of Chu." Lead the knife into a fast, live up to the boy's head. ”

seems to be impassioned, but in fact, the author of this poem is Wang Jingwei.

In just a few decades, Wang Jingwei has changed from a patriotic youth to a big traitor.

And this group of students used poems written by Wang Jingwei to oppose Wang Jingwei, which is really naïve and ridiculous.

This also implies that patriotic students, including Kwong Yumin and Lai Xiujin, are essentially a rabble.

Everyone is acting, only Wang Jiazhi is serious.

Her tragedy was already doomed from the start.

Ang Lee recalled that when he read the end of the novel, he was shocked to see Wang Jiazhi let Mr. Yi go, and he didn't understand why Zhang Ailing wrote this.

But it was this weirdness that made him obsessed with this novel.

Years later, when he made the film, he admitted that he still hadn't been able to read Zhang Ailing.

The screenwriter of this film, Wang Huiling, also said that "Lust and Caution" may be Zhang Ailing's most mysterious and incomprehensible novel.

Even if they couldn't read it thoroughly, they still worked hard to make a film, and hid a lot of details into the movie, trying to shoot what was in Zhang Ailing's heart.

"Lust and Caution" is such a movie that deserves to be revisited again and again.

Its protagonists are Wang Jiazhi and Mr. Yi, and the prototypes are Zheng Pingru and Ding Mo Estate, as well as Zhang Ailing and Hu Lancheng.

Zhang Ailing wrote this novel with personal feelings integrated into it, and it is by no means a work of freak love.

1 mahjong scene, 2 assassinations, and 3 bed scenes make the whole film vivid and three-dimensional, and it is still possible to interpret new things until 17 years later.

I look forward to the day when "Lust and Caution" can "redress grievances".

Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: A chicken

©原创丨文章著作权：皮皮电影（ppdianying）

Please do not reprint in any form without authorization

View original image 1.54M

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•