Lust, Caution is NC-17 because of explicit sex scenes so if that rating is a turn off, read no further. I think that I prefer Paul Verhoeven’s take on the Mata Hari trope in Black Book than Ang Lee’s, which is not a fair comparison since each director had different goals. Verhoeven grew up during WWII in the city that he depicts and deals with the raw complexity of human nature and humanity’s innate desperation for survival whereas Lee is desperate to hit tragic love notes with brief cracks in society’s facade. Lee loves how society suffocates authentic human expressions of passionate emotions and how that emotion finds ways of leaking out that is unhealthy for everyone. WWII is the incidental backdrop. It took 2 hours for the main character in Lust, Caution to confront her handlers with even a fraction of the gumption and frankness that the main character in Black Book does in its opening scenes. The female characters are completely different-I never completely bought that Mrs. Mai would enter this kind of work because she felt adrift unless sex is a metaphor for invasion and the female body as a symbol of a country. OR alternatively Lee was continuing a proud tradition of asserting that poseur revolutionaries are too uptight, and only fascists know how to f**k. Lee’s depiction may be more realistic because his fascist lover is actually a sadist. If Verhoeven’s Mata Hari is a confident woman, Lee’s version is a kid who is in over her head, and though she seemingly consents, it isn’t that far from rape. She has no real sexual agency of her own-her initial object of interest (who is believably realistic and briefly depicted) remains untouched, and one lover is a joyless exercise in duty/dress rehearsal. The interaction between all the actors in Lust, Caution is simply perfection even if the main character’s biography isn’t completely believable. The separate parts of Lust, Caution works: infectious joy of stupid college students feeling like they can change the world; the reality of how ill-prepared they are when revolutionary ideas become awkward, violent reality; the tension at the Mahjong table; the violent, desperate sexual encounters. Lee even managed to convince me that the sadist really did love his Mata Hari, but overall the movie’s deliberate pacing failed to hold my interest. Lust, Caution was a well done movie, but unless you adore Ang Lee’s work and have no problem with violent sexual scenes, it is not a must see.