Ang Lee back in Venice with steamy spy thriller
Gina Doggett

VENICE, Italy—Taiwan’s Ang Lee, victorious in Venice two years ago with “Brokeback Mountain,” was back Thursday, this time with erotic spy thriller “Se, Jie” (Lust, Caution) as the world’s oldest film festival hotted up. The tense drama stars novice actress Tang Wei as a resistance spy who slowly, creepily, lets her target, a powerful political figure played by Tony Leung, “worm his way into her heart.”
Based on a short story by popular Chinese writer Eileen Chang and set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in the 1940s, the film’s many sex scenes are as explicit as they are emotionally ambiguous. “Sex in my film? It’s just the search for oneself. What I wanted to show was none other than ambiguity,” said Lee, whose “Brokeback Mountain” also garnered the best director award at last year’s Oscars.
Also screened Thursday was British director Kenneth Branagh’s “Sleuth” starring Michael Caine and Jude Law, with a crisp screenplay by English playwright and Nobel literature laureate Harold Pinter.
The two-man remake of the 1972 Joseph L. Mankiewicz film, in which Caine played the part now taken by Law, is an exercise in second-guessing and sang froid — or what Branagh described as a “short, sharp, concentrated boxing match.” It’s Law’s second attempt at filling Caine’s shoes, following his starring role in the remake of the 1966 comedy “Alfie” about a Cockney womaniser’s comeuppance.
But “Sleuth” can hardly be considered a remake, Caine said. “This is completely different take, much more severe,” of the original play by Anthony Shaffer.
He added: “Once Harold was on board, we were in a whole new world. The simplicity of the idea is such that you can take it anywhere.” Despite a preponderance of British and US entries this year — totalling nine of the 22 starting candidates for the Golden Lion in the main competition — the festival also boasts a sizeable Asian contingent.
Festival director Marco Mueller has said that a 23rd “surprise film” to be screened next week will be from an Asian country “by an Asian master,” specifying only that it is a country other than China, South Korea or Japan.
Friday’s lineup includes three films in competition, beginning with Brian De Palma’s “Redacted,” about the Iraq war centring on the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl by US soldiers.
Next George Clooney stars as the title character in the corporate legal thriller “Michael Clayton.”
And “Nessuna Qualita agli Eroi” (Fallen Heroes) by Paolo Franchi with rising star Elio Germano will be the first Italian entry to be screened since the festival opened on Wednesday. It is one of several films showing male nudity in this year’s selection, but this promises to stand out by promising a glimpse of Germano in an evident state of arousal — Franchi hopes the scene won’t distract from the movie’s other qualities.
Also Friday, Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli will announce plans for the construction of a new cinema hall for the festival venue, to be completed by 2011. In this 75th anniversary year of La Mostra, all 23 of the films in competition will be world premieres, a feat achieved only once before — last year.
Another 22 films will vie for prizes in the avant-garde Horizons and Horizons Documentaries categories, while 13 will be screened out of competition.