"Lust, Caution"

Cafe Society
1

One cinema in Bangkok, called House, is showing Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution” completely uncut. There are a handful of other cinemas in the city showing it, but those others are all showing the cut version. The wife and I saw the real version at House yesterday (Saturday) and can confirm it is uncut. For one thing, if this IS the cut version, I’d (almost) shudder to think what more you could have seen that WAS cut. I also happened to know beforehand that the uncut version ran 158 minutes to the end of the credits, the cut version 149 minutes, so I timed it. Sure enough, 158 minutes. It says “Exclusive US Version” on their website, which is why we decided to take a chance, plus we figured if anyone could sneak past the censors, it would be these guys.

We talked to one of the staff working there beforehand, seen him there for years, and he swore that unlike the other venues, they were indeed showing the full version. In fact, he said a rival art-house cinema in a more central area (House is rather out of the way) was lying to people who asked and saying that House was showing the cut version just like everyone else. He said House was actually risking jail by showing this uncensored version but that they felt people deserved to see the whole film. Good for them!

2

So what was so risque about those cut 9 minutes?

In any case, I gotta say, unless you’re Francis Ford Coppola, your movie probably doesn’t need to run over two and a half hours…maybe Ang Lee will prove me wrong.

3

Just some torrid sex. Ironic that I can step into one of several Bangkok bars and for the price of a $2 dollar beer watch four nude lesbians have group sex 6 feet in front of me or, if I were single, step into certain other bars and receive oral sex while sitting at the bar with my beer for the price of a pizza in the US, but sex in movies routinely gets sliced, Vaselined or pixellated out.

We did not feel the film was too long. Enjoyed it very much.

4

I fear I’ve misspoken. Beers at the live-sex-show venues are actually a whopping $4.

5

I’ve since read that the sex scenes in *Lust, Caution * may have been real and not staged. At least Ang Lee has been hinting at it, as reported here. They did have an aura of authenticity, and imdb says they were “shot over 11 days on a closed set, with only the main camera and sound personnel present.” The first link above, to Ebert’s Answer Man column, says the sex in Martin Scorsese’s *Boxcar Bertha * was real. An interesting phenomenon.