Lust, Caution

Pay attention: context is everything.By nature, we are not bounded and impermeable free agents. Only the insensible move from setting to setting without significant alteration. Our clothes signal our relationship to the context, telegraphing our degree of ease or discomfort. And this is exactly why you should judge a book by its cover, a piece of wisdom well-understood by the characters in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution. 

Fashion plays a central role in this movie-- in fact the word for “caution” in Chinese is a homonym of the word for “ring.” As the plot follows the affair between double agent Wang Jiazhi (Tang Wei) and Japanese agent "Mr. Yi" (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, the fashions weave a parallel tale.

In an early scene, the camera zooms in on the women's beringed hands in a game of Mahjong. Seemingly in a leisurely moment, the players are nonetheless attired in constricting, formal attire. Mr. Yi carefully observes them from the confines of his beautifully-tailored suit, its somber tones contrasting with the jewel tones of the women's dress.In this treacherous, fascist environment, the clothes signify control. No one has the luxury of revealing their true selves. The women are the puppets to Mr. Yi’s puppet master, and their carefully curated appearances indicate that they are aware of this fact. Mr. Yi in turn has his own puppet master, the collaborationist government, which in turn answers to the Japanese, and so on.Fittingly, of all the characters, Wang Jiazhi takes her clothes the most seriously. After all, for a double agent, context is paramount.At the beginning of her adventures, Wang, then an idealistic student, dons the androgynous robe of the scholar. By the end, as a woman in danger of losing her soul, her trench coat and cloche hats recall Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. Wang sees several parallels between her life and the heroines of the era's propaganda films. In these films, resistance to foreign rule was imagined through melodramas about glamorous women serving as spies. Like the heroines in these films, Wang is playing a role that demands she presents a carefully constructed façade to the world. And just as an actress submits to direction, Wang must obey her masters within the Chinese resistance, as well as the sadistic Mr. Yi.{{1}} But more significant than the clothes in this movie are the accessories. Witness the sinister round-framed glasses worn by Mrs. Yi (Joan Chen), signifying her decision to restrict her view of her husband’s nefarious activities, both inside and outside the bedroom.And coming back to the titular rings, it is only when Mr. Yi gifts Wang with a glittering diamond ring that she reclaims her soul. To her, the hard, clear stone represents the triumph of romance over cynicism, the one unsullied object in the filthy world she inhabits. She succumbs to a vortex of desire, throwing caution and control to the winds.[[1]]Gina Marchetti in "Eileen Chang and Ang Lee at the Movies: the Cinematic Politics of Lust, Caution," Eileen Chang: Romancing Languages, Cultures and Genres, 2012.[[1]]