This movie is set in the China of 40s, during the war. Personally, I don't know too much about war times in China, but I appreciated how this movie provides us just what is necessary for the plot development without going into deep historical details (otherwise it would have been 4 hours long).
This movie kept me glued to the screen and I think that this happened because of the strong empathy I established with Wang Jiazhi. All the scenes in which she appears with Mr. Yee create a big tension both because of the risk that she's taking as a spy and the evolution of their relationship.
I really enjoyed the movie, but as I expected from Ang Lee, the finale is pretty tragic. I watched Life of Pi and Brokeback Mountain before this movie, and both endings caused conflicting reactions to me. In this particular case, I thought that she would have fallen in love with Mr. Yee and she would have got desperate after his hypothetical death, but I never imagined that she saved him. After that, Yee's cold and quick decision to kill her got me upset. So at first I didn't like the ending, just my personal opinion.
Then I realized that, even if she had been a very talented actress for the whole time, she was just an innocent young woman after all. Her beloved Kuang never declared himself in love to her and her life has been empty before this "job". On the other side, we find an unscrupulous lonely man, which is somehow fascinating to Wang's eyes. Sex scenes evoke all the pain which they hide and keep safe inside themselves: this fact is highlighted by the gazes of the two actors, the passion, the lust, the violence. An outburst of love like this motivates her choice to save him in the finale, but it is not sufficiently important for a man who has always based his life on cruelty and "work".
Just to defuse this review, Yee's wife character was funny. She is the personification of "Who wants to live longer, should mind just his own business" (that is playing Mahjong in this case).
This movie kept me glued to the screen and I think that this happened because of the strong empathy I established with Wang Jiazhi. All the scenes in which she appears with Mr. Yee create a big tension both because of the risk that she's taking as a spy and the evolution of their relationship.
I really enjoyed the movie, but as I expected from Ang Lee, the finale is pretty tragic. I watched Life of Pi and Brokeback Mountain before this movie, and both endings caused conflicting reactions to me. In this particular case, I thought that she would have fallen in love with Mr. Yee and she would have got desperate after his hypothetical death, but I never imagined that she saved him. After that, Yee's cold and quick decision to kill her got me upset. So at first I didn't like the ending, just my personal opinion.
Then I realized that, even if she had been a very talented actress for the whole time, she was just an innocent young woman after all. Her beloved Kuang never declared himself in love to her and her life has been empty before this "job". On the other side, we find an unscrupulous lonely man, which is somehow fascinating to Wang's eyes. Sex scenes evoke all the pain which they hide and keep safe inside themselves: this fact is highlighted by the gazes of the two actors, the passion, the lust, the violence. An outburst of love like this motivates her choice to save him in the finale, but it is not sufficiently important for a man who has always based his life on cruelty and "work".
Just to defuse this review, Yee's wife character was funny. She is the personification of "Who wants to live longer, should mind just his own business" (that is playing Mahjong in this case).