Bijou Apparel

Provocative thrilling and passionate Lust Caution is the daring new film from acclaimed Academy Award®-winning director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain; Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon). Set against the backdrop of a transforming countrya young woman finds herself swept up in a radical plot to assassinate a ruthless and secretive intelligence agent. As she immerses herself in her role as a cosmopolitan seductress she becomes entangled in a dangerous game that will ultimately determine her fate. Erotic breathtaking and suspenseful this award-winning film is being called "exquisitely beautiful" (Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times) and "lushly sensual" (Leah Rozen People).System Requirements:Running Time: 159 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA Rating: NC-17 UPC: 025193330628 Manufacturer No: 62033306

Lust, Caution, Ang Lee's follow up to Brokeback Mountain, for which he won the Academy Award® for Best Director, continues his exploration of people with a passion for each other trapped in a world where their passion could be life-threatening, but in a very different context this time. Set in China during the Japanese occupation of early World War II, the underlying plot concerns the story of young Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei), an actress and member of a small group of student resistors planning to infiltrate the home of Mr. Yee (Tony Leung), a high-ranking collaborationist government official, in order to kill him for his role in the torture and executions of Chinese resistance fighters. Chi ingratiates herself with Yee's wife, the sophisticated and cultured Mrs. Yee (Joan Chen) under the guise of being the wife of a wealthy but unseen tycoon. Flashbacks tell the tale of how Chi came to be involved with the resistors: her acting ability is her most valuable asset, and her assignment is to act the role of Mr. Yee's lover, right down to the sex. The story of their love and the painful intimacy it involves for both of them is told through their sexual relationship, which starts out violently, drifts into S&M, and shifts with their feelings, moving from pain and fear to some sort of desperate connection. This is lust with a capital L; the film's sex scenes have become famous for their frankness and acrobatic portrayals (they took 12 days to film), but amazingly enough, it's never prurient. The nature of their sexual relationship, and not the sex itself, is the point. Chi falls in love with the man she's supposed to kill, but there is no stopping the mission and she knows it. The danger of it all collapsing for them both is ever present, and that's the Caution. The cinematography and direction in Lust, Caution is masterful, and every scene is beautiful. The film does drift into a languid pace, and at times one wonders why Lee would feel the need to draw it out at the expense of delaying the crucial climactic scenes. Still, it's a wonderful piece of storytelling that should only help solidify Ang Lee's place in cinematic history as a master of films that express the difficulty of being essentially human in an inhumane world. --Daniel Vancini Stills from Lust, Caution (click for larger image)

Though Jackie Chan is billed as the star of The Prisoner, he's actually part of a stellar ensemble cast including Sammo Hung (Dragons Forever, TV's Martial Law), Andy Lau (Saviour of the Soul), and Tony Leung Ka-fai (The Lover). Leung plays a cop who goes undercover in a prison to dig out corruption; Hung is a roustabout prisoner who keeps breaking out to see his son; Chan plays a pool shark who accidentally kills a gambler; and Lau is that gambler's mob boss brother who's sworn to kill Chan. They all end up in the same prison, resulting in a complex, engrossing, and sometimes brutal story--think of it as the Hong Kong version of HBO's Oz. Which is not to say it isn't full of the bizarre narrative shifts that make Hong Kong movies such a perverse pleasure: Chan got into a fight with this gambler because he was trying to raise money to buy his dying girlfriend a black-market liver; at one point, Hung escapes and takes his son to the park, where they buy cotton candy and have some quality time; and at the end the whole movie takes a bizarre lurch into John Woo-style gunplay spectacle. This isn't a criticism--this crazy quilt of emotional tones and genres adds to the movie's entertainment value without detracting from the emotional power of some gripping scenes of prison conflict. For new Jackie Chan fans who've seen his American movies and want to learn more about why he's one of the biggest stars in the world, this is probably not the right place to start; but for anyone looking to experience more of one of the world's most exuberant and engaging bodies of cinema, The Prisoner offers jolting fights and hairpin twists and turns. --Bret Fetzer

A classic Jackie Chan martial arts movie.

1975 Foreign Language Press. Paperback, 117 pages. A collection of Chinese short stories and color plates.