After another American sojourn, the precociously chameleonic Ang Lee gets back to Chinese history, this time Shanghai under Japanese occupation in 1942. The Japanese hardly get a look in, however, as the main focus is squarely on a member of the underground (Wei Tang) detailed to lure a collaborator (Hong Kong stalwart Tony Leung), and the love story of sorts that develops between them.
Lee might be criticised from the outset for paying scant attention to the occupiers or the immense material hardships suffered by the bulk of the populace. But his interest is wholly the collapse of the resistance before the forces of fascism, only embodied by the crumbling of the emotional resistance of the honeypot before the cold self-preserving fury of the oppressor. Patriotic loyalty goes out of the window along with self-respect as she submits to effective rape and then surrenders her love, in a form of Stockholm syndrome.
The linking strand through most of Lee's films can be summarised as that of emotional self-denial, a struggle to maintain a front of propriety in the face of societal convention, while the character is assailed underneath by powerful urges. The moment of catharsis is when the effort to maintain the facade fails. And so too here, only that the central character of Wong Chia Chi flips her cover mid-course from passive collaborator to loyal resistance fighter, as the object of her passions is transposed. What's lacking is an explanation for the impetus behind this. One would hope the message is more than that all women love a bastard.
6/10
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