Anyone who has taken the time to read my comments on movies understands by now that I don't see movies through the eye of a technical critic, but rather through the eye of a lover of film. With that disclaimer, let me flatly state that Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is a masterpiece. It is a timeless tale of forbidden love and self-sacrifice that is a treasure.

Tony Leung, as romantic as he is malevolent, plays the head of the Chinese secret police who is collaborating with the Japanese during World War II to catch members of the resistance. Tang Wei is beguiling as the beautiful, naïve drama student recruited by the resistance to befriend and then betray Leung, only to fall in love with him in the process.

Much like Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, this film deals with a female member of the resistance who is forced to become intimate with her intended prey. However, while Claude Rains and Ingrid Bergman's relationship was left to one's imagination, the stunningly vivid as well as provocative sexual encounters between Mr. Leung and Ms. Wei rival anything ever put on the screen. They literally wrap themselves up into a passionate human knot that is simultaneously lured, violent and yet shockingly tender. Other than the puppets in the Matt Stone/Trey Parker farce, Team America: World Police, the screen has never seen such limber lovers!

Another element of this film that I found terribly intriguing was the price paid by those who join any resistance movement during a war, particularly women. While we tend to romanticize such people, be it the resistance members in Nazi occupied France of the 1940's are those standing in front of a tank in communist China, the simple fact is that many of them paid a horrible price to stand by their principles.

Think about this and how it relates to our country today. Does anyone recognize the hypocrisy behind telling the Dixie Chicks to "Just shut-up and sing" and simultaneously demanding that Iran and Myanmar permit public protest in their streets? It has always puzzled me how the very people who praise protests in other countries will condemn similar protests in our country as being "Anti-American."

Anyone remember the slogan of the 1960's aimed at youthful war protestors "America, love it or leave it?" Shouldn't the very Americans who support wars like that in Iraq which are fought in part to export democratic principles like free speech be the first one's to recognize the value of protest in our own country?

In any event, let me close by saying that Ang Lee remains one of my favorite directors for a number of reasons, not the least of which is his versatility. In the last ten years he has directed The Ice Storm, his poisonous valentine to the vacuousness of suburban life in America; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which ingeniously redefined martial arts films with romantic drama; and Brokeback Mountain, which remains to this day the most poignant depiction of homosexuality and society's not so hidden prejudice thereto that has been put on the screen. Mr. Lee is an innovative artist by any definition.