LUST, CAUTION: THE STORY, THE SCREENPLAY, AND THE MAKING OF THE FILM
By EILEEN CHANG, WANG HUI LING, and JAMES SCHAMUS
(Translated by Julia Lovell)

Pantheon, 2007
ISBN: 9780375425240
308 pages; Hardcover
GENRE(S): Fiction, Short Story, Screenplay, Nonfiction, TV/Film

Reviewed by Yennie Cheung

Hearing literary purists bemoan the butchering of a good story has become an inevitable part of watching movie adaptations. In recent years, many films have been skewered by literature fans for the movies' inability to stay faithful to the source material in plot, sentiment, or both. After all, how can one turn a linguistically complex 400-page novel into a pithy two-hour movie without hacking it to bits?

Luckily, with their adaptation of Eileen Chang's short story "Lust, Caution," moviemakers were faced with quite the opposite problem: How were director Ang Lee and screenwriters Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus to turn this short story about deceit and espionage into a rich, dramatic two-hour movie? The answer: with a script as rich and provocative as the source material.

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Set during World War II in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, Chang's short story crafts an intricate tale about Wang Chia-chih, a student actress turned amateur secret agent for a small resistance group. Her job is to pose as Mai Tai-Tai (or, essentially, Mrs. Mai), the young wife of a wealthy Hong Kong businessman, and to seduce Mr. Yee, a high-ranking government official and Japanese collaborator. As her mission continues, however, the lines between playacting and reality become blurred, and Wang Chia-chih discovers herself to be a woman with two names but no identity.

In English, much of Chang's wordplay and cultural allusions are lost, sometimes found again in supplemental essays written by the filmmakers. Ang Lee, for example, explains in his preface the significance of a common Chinese saying used in the short story. In Chinese, the phrase deftly describes the complex relationship between Wang Chia-chih and Yee; however, in English, the description merely becomes a pretty turn of phrase.

Chang, however, was a cunning storyteller who knew how to use sensory details to her advantage—details that could easily be translated into script and, eventually, the screen. As Wang Chia-chih fraternizes with Yee's wife, the clatter of mahjong tiles, the twinkling of ostentatious jewelry, and the never-ending chatter about food give readers a glimpse of the leisurely life of Chinese high society—a life that is, for our heroine, still troubling and altogether frenetic in pace. Meanwhile, the use of various languages (including English, Japanese, Hindi, and several Chinese dialects), as well as the use of both Asian and Western-style clothes, comments on the human ability to adapt and assimilate.

Both the short story and the script are, essentially, works of character analysis, with the screenwriters exploring the misery behind Yee's tough exterior and Wang Chia-chih's love-hate relationship with him. There is also greater significance to K'uang Yu-Min, an acting student whose patriotism inspires him to create the resistance group for which Wang Chia-chih spies. Though his character is mentioned but never seen in the short story, his role in the screenplay is not an act of cinematic liberty; on the contrary, he is an essential part of this story. His gung-ho attitude and youthful inexperience shape both his and Wang Chia-chih's fates. In short story form, Chang could do no more than explain these characters' backgrounds; in script, the screenwriters were able to flesh out the complex motivations behind their actions.

With short essays from the film crew on the making of the movie, this extended version of "Lust, Caution" has plenty of insider info and trivia to interest film buffs. However, the true beauty of this compilation is the ability to read in succession two versions of a single story. While Eileen Chang's short story provided readers a focused, intricate tale about identity, Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus's script pulls back to reveal a greater network of beliefs and emotions. In this sense, the script is not so much an adaptation as it is a companion piece. It is the bigger picture amplifying Chang's beautiful, tragic vignette.

(March, 2008)