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Review: Lust, Caution (色，戒) (2007)
There wasn't anything in the movie that surprised me (except maybe the graphic sexual content), but I still enjoyed it. Does that makes sense? The story went in a direction that was somewhat predictable, and there wasn't much extra noise or side plots that distracted me from the main story.
I would recommend this movie as a rich story with great cinematography, but I would put a warning for the sex scenes. Spoilers.
Story
The story was about Wang Jiazhi, a student, who went undercover to attract Mr. Yee, who worked for the Japanese side of the war. Over time, Wang Jiazhi fell in love with Mr. Yee, and foiled her team's opportunity to assassinate him out of a moment of love. Mr. Yee had Wang Jiazhi's entire team executed.
There was a side plot about the relationship between Wang Jiazhi and Kuang Yumin, a classmate who was also part of the undercover team. They had feelings for each other, but they never acted on them.
I was curious about why Wang Jiazhi did not take the poison pill. She was given a poison pill that she would take in case her cover got blown. After she warned Mr. Yee to leave, she'd already blown her own cover, and regardless of what she did, Mr. Yee would have her killed anyway. There was a scene of her taking out her poison pill, but we later saw her with her fellow students. Perhaps she felt bad for betraying her comrades and thus felt that it was only right if she went through the same punishment as they did.
This was a pretty long movie, at around 2.5 hours. However, I think that it tried its best to stick to just the story as there was already a lot to show on screen. The story was based on a book by Eileen Chang, who is a reputable author. I think if I were to read the book, I'd get a lot more out of it than just the story (e.g. more about the characters and various themes). But the movie just focused on the story itself due to time limitations, and I'm fine with that. The story still moved fast in terms of the conversations, as there were a lot of actual events to get through.
Production
Cinematography
There was nothing to complain about when it came to how the movie was shot. Ang Lee was already a well established director by the time this movie came out, so the fact that the shots were all well-polished came as no surprise.
Costumes and set
Having watched many low to medium cdramas lately, the production value of the costumes and set were a little awe inspiring, but honestly, I should've expected nothing less from a big budget movie like this.
Dialogue delivery
While the acting itself wasn't exactly bad, the line delivery was not the best because many actors were speaking in languages that were not their native tongue.
When this movie first came out, I remember my mom saying that apparently Wang Leehom had to be "retrained" in Chinese because he probably had a heavy Taiwanese accent.
Anyway, most of the actors had accents that honestly bothered me a little bit.
Chin Kar-lok, who played Lao Cao, probably had the worst Mandarin accent. He is a Hong Kong actor, but his pronunciation was so bad, oh my god. As for Tony Leung and Wang Leehom, they had Hong Kong and Taiwanese accents, which honestly did bother me, but at that point I realized I was going to have to deal with it. Tang Wei spoke perfect Mandarin so no issues there.
Tang Wei and Wang Leehom also spoke Cantonese, and had a bit of an accent. Speaking of which, it was curious that their characters were speaking Mandarin in Hong Kong, but I suppose they had to do that to appeal to the mass market.
Tang Wei spoke Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, English, and also attended a Japanese class during this movie, with most dialogue in Mandarin and Shanghainese. Honestly, I'm a fan of the international movie experience. If it makes sense for characters to speak a certain language, just go ahead with it and have subtitles for the audience members.
I think the accents were probably my biggest concern with the movie because it did distract me from enjoying the movie.
Sexual content
The affair between Mr. Yee and Wang Jiazhi became sexual when she went to Shanghai. Now, these sex scenes were INCREDIBLY EXPLICIT. I don't know if it was necessary to be as explicit as the movie was, but it did get the point across that Wang Jiazhi felt like she was being taken control of by Mr. Yee. I don't know if this point would've stood if the scenes were less explicit, but I think it could've.
Censorship
On Wikipedia, I looked up what scenes were censored. I could understand the reasoning behind cutting out the violence and sex scenes. While not ideal, they could still be cut out while preserving a coherent story.
However, I read that the dialogue was modified so that Wang Jiazhi did not betray the resistance by warning Mr. Yee. This would've changed the movie entirely. I know it was probably done to show that Wang Jiazhi was a patriot and therefore a worthy heroine, but that was the complete opposite of what the end was supposed to be.
Characters
There were several supporting characters but I'm only going to speak about a handful of them.
Wang Jiazhi
Wang Jiazhi was the spy sent to lure Mr. Yee into the trap. Through their affair, she started to fall in love with Mr. Yee, and eventually betrayed her own resistance group to save Mr. Yee, at the expense of her own life.
When Wang Jiazhi vented to Lao Wu about how frustrated she felt, she explained that Mr. Yee kept taking and taking from her. In the sex scenes, we saw that Wang Jiazhi would sometimes cry during sex, presumably due to both physical and emotional fatigue.
Due to this description, I felt that Wang Jiazhi was more of a hostage of Mr. Yee's control than a lover. What I mean is that I didn't believe that she was necessarily in love with him the way that normal people fall in love with each other. Instead, he reached a part of her that no one had ever reached (through their sexual and romantic relationship) and that was enough for him to have control over her that no one else could, not even her country.
Wang Jiazhi was shown to be struck by a sudden sense of overwhelming love for Mr. Yee when she put on her custom made diamond ring. Honestly, it felt kind of materialistic, but I think Wang Jiazhi was not supposed to be the moral upright person that she used to be after she got involved with Mr. Yee. In this moment, Wang Jiazhi gave away her resistance group, despite all of the progress they made, because she could no longer work both sides.
Kuang Yumin had feelings for Wang Jiazhi while they were students, but he only kissed her three years later when she was knee deep in the affair with Mr. Yee. Wang Jiazhi said he should've done so three years earlier, and stormed off. If she'd been romantically involved with Kuang Yumin years ago, I do think that her undercover operation would've gone differently. Wang Jiazhi was a virgin prior to the operation, and so her relationship with Mr. Yee was her first love, which many people always have a soft spot for.
As I mentioned above, Wang Jiazhi had taken out her poison pill, but did not ingest it. My guess is that while warning Mr. Yee was an unpatriotic act, she wanted to die a proud patriot like the rest of her classmates. When kneeling on the ground ready to be executed, Kuang Yumin gaave Wang Jiazhi a look. I don't know if the classmates knew that Wang Jiazhi was responsible for warning Mr. Yee, but I think that Kuang Yumin knew that they'd lost her long ago. I think the look was a little bit of resentment, because she didn't deserve to die a patriot's death like her classmates did.
Mr. Yee
Mr. Yee was a mysterious man who worked for the Japanese side in the Sino-Japanese war, which is of course very unpatriotic.
Lao Wu had mentioned that they'd sent spies to seduce him before, but he'd grown suspicious of them and had killed them. Knowledge of this information made me a little wary of Mr. Yee's love for Wang Jiazhi. After having killed two mistresses for being spies, shouldn't he have been more suspicious of her?
That being said, in the end, he did kill Wang Jiazhi. We didn't know if he'd loved his two mistresses too, and killed them with hesitation as well. So perhaps he was just a man who fell in love easily.
That being said, what is love for Mr. Yee? The first time he had sex with Wang Jiazhi, it was basically rape. He was extremely rough and controlling. Did he love, or did he just seek control? Perhaps he was afraid of falling in love because love exposed a vulnerability, and by taking control of love and turning it into lust and control, he was trying to cover up that vulnerability.
I think we were supposed to believe that Mr. Yee was in love with Wang Jiazhi, but knowing his past history and what his love style was, I think perhaps he mistook his love for power as romantic love.
Mrs. Yee
I think she might've been aware of Mr. Yee's affairs, but didn't know who his mistresses were. Mr. Yee had two mistresses before Wang Jiazhi, so this was old hat to him. However, we saw that Mr. and Mrs. Yee spent a lot of time apart, and Mrs. Yee spent most of her time playing mahjong, so it is probably not inconceivable that she was unaware of all of his affairs.
In the end, she questioned Mr. Yee about what'd happened to Wang Jiazhi. She'd stayed in a guest room, but people had come in to take her things. Of course it was hard for Mrs. Yee not to realize that Wang Jiazhi was a political threat to their family. Mr. Yee instead told her to believe that "Mrs. Mai" had just returned to Hong Kong. And I think Mrs. Yee was willing to be blind to the obviously shady dealings as long as her safety was preserved.
Kuang Yumin
Kuang Yumin was always a patriot. His older brother had been killed in war so his family didn't let him fight. The only way he knew how to help out was to star in patriotic plays. When he and his classmates were still in Hong Kong, they set up an amateur operation to kill Mr. Yee, and it kind of worked, until Mr. Yee moved to Shanghai.
Three years later, Kuang Yumin had become a KMT agent and recruited Wang Jiazhi back for another shot at getting to Mr. Yee. He'd barely met Mr. Yee so it was easy for him to hate him, for him to paint him as a no-good evil unpatriotic scumbag.
For Kuang Yumin, I think patriotism was kind of a safe place for him. As long as he prioritized patriotism, then he'd be doing good. I think that was why he never acted on his attraction to Wang Jiazhi. It would distract them from doing the real important work.
Three years later, when he was more in tune with his emotions, and he saw that Wang Jiazhi was stressed about being undercover, he tried to comfort her, and kiss her to show her that he was by her side. But the ship had sailed and she was no longer receptive to his advances.
While I don't think that Kuang Yumin hated Wang Jiazhi for rejecting him, I think he would always judge her for giving away their operation (if he knew that she'd done so).
Lao Wu
He was the leader of the operation in Shanghai, but was ultimately not caught when Mr. Yee's men uncovered the resistance group.
I don't remember if he said that Mr. Yee's previous two mistresses were his own spies, but I do believe that he would go on to operate more undercover missions to get to Mr. Yee and other country traitors. I think this goes on to show how many lives are lost in secret when it comes to espionage operations.
Lao Cao
He was working for Mr. Yee in Hong Kong. When he discovered the students' attempt to assassinate Mr. Yee, he wanted in on the operation, only for the money. The students ended up killing him. The scene itself was pretty jarring. The students held him down so that Kuang Yumin could stab him, and some of the other students stabbed him too. The entire scene was done without music, so all of the sounds were just the sounds of frustration at trying to subdue Lao Cao. I think this event showed the students that what they were doing was not supposed to be a fun summer project. It was real, about life and death.
Themes
Sleeping with the lover
Wang Jiazhi was having sex and falling in love with Mr. Yee while also simultaneously planning his assassination. She wasn't even just sleeping with him to get information or money, Mr. Yee needed to be killed.
Of course it would make sense that over time, she would feel incredibly torn as she had to fall into Mr. Yee's love trap in order for any of this to work, but whether it was possible to climb out of the trap is another story.
Love and sex
What is shown as "love" in this movie tended to be lust a lot of the time. While Mr. Yee and Wang Jiazhi didn't have sex until Shanghai, their interactions up until then still had sexual undertones to them.
That was one of the reasons that I felt that Wang Jiazhi and Mr. Yee weren't necessarily in love with each other in the traditional sense. Wang Jiazhi was a virgion so Mr. Yee was her first sexual partner, and obviously he held a special place for her. As for Mr. Yee, he was very violent during sex, and after they began their affair, they often spent their time either having sex, or on materialistic things such as the diamond ring.
I think that Mr. Yee and Wang Jiazhi mistook what they had for love, but honestly, that might be realistic for many people in the real world. They enjoy something about another person and mistake it for romantic love between two souls, when it might be about something else.
Blindness
Characters had to be willfully blind to certain things in order to carry on living.
Wang Jiazhi was living two lives, and could only live one at a time. When she was a patriot, she had to compartmentalize her love for Mr. Yee. And when she was with Mr. Yee, she had to pretend that she wasn't simultaneously planning his murder.
In the end, Mr. Yee had to pretend that he never loved Wang Jiazhi in order to ensure his own survival. He didn't even want to see her, because he knew it wouldn't help him. If he saw her, he might've empathized with her and let her go, and she would probably be used to get back at him again.
Mrs. Yee was asked by Mr. Yee to pretend that Wang Jiazhi had just gone back to Hong Kong. Both of them knew this was clearly not the case, but if Mrs. Yee wanted to survive, she must'nt ask any questions.
Colourful ring
The Wikipedia page for the movie pointed out this clever double meaning in the title. The word for "lust" in the title of the movie also means colour, and the word for "caution" can also mean ring.
So "Lust, caution" can also mean colourful ring, which refers to the ring that Mr. Yee bought for Wang Jiazhi as a symbol of his love. However, as mentioned above, Wang Jiazhi being moved by the ring did feel a little materialistic, and perhaps the colourful ring wasn't necessarily meant to represent love, but the sexual and passionate relationship that they had.
Overall
This was a good viewing experience because I did empathize with Wang Jiazhi who was plotting Mr. Yee's murder but also having to sympathize with him in order to love him. That being said, I also thought it was a hard watch because I was rooting for Mr. Yee to be taken out, and I felt that Wang Jiazhi was getting herself into more danger as she fell further into lust with him. But I can't put it all on her because she being torn between two sides, both of which she wanted to please. She wanted to be a patriot because that was what she decided as a student, but sex with Mr. Yee ignited a part of herself that she'd never known about, and she couldn't help but keep coming back.
I would recommend this movie as a rich story with great cinematography, but I would put a warning for the sex scenes. Spoilers.
Story
The story was about Wang Jiazhi, a student, who went undercover to attract Mr. Yee, who worked for the Japanese side of the war. Over time, Wang Jiazhi fell in love with Mr. Yee, and foiled her team's opportunity to assassinate him out of a moment of love. Mr. Yee had Wang Jiazhi's entire team executed.
There was a side plot about the relationship between Wang Jiazhi and Kuang Yumin, a classmate who was also part of the undercover team. They had feelings for each other, but they never acted on them.
I was curious about why Wang Jiazhi did not take the poison pill. She was given a poison pill that she would take in case her cover got blown. After she warned Mr. Yee to leave, she'd already blown her own cover, and regardless of what she did, Mr. Yee would have her killed anyway. There was a scene of her taking out her poison pill, but we later saw her with her fellow students. Perhaps she felt bad for betraying her comrades and thus felt that it was only right if she went through the same punishment as they did.
This was a pretty long movie, at around 2.5 hours. However, I think that it tried its best to stick to just the story as there was already a lot to show on screen. The story was based on a book by Eileen Chang, who is a reputable author. I think if I were to read the book, I'd get a lot more out of it than just the story (e.g. more about the characters and various themes). But the movie just focused on the story itself due to time limitations, and I'm fine with that. The story still moved fast in terms of the conversations, as there were a lot of actual events to get through.
Production
Cinematography
There was nothing to complain about when it came to how the movie was shot. Ang Lee was already a well established director by the time this movie came out, so the fact that the shots were all well-polished came as no surprise.
Costumes and set
Having watched many low to medium cdramas lately, the production value of the costumes and set were a little awe inspiring, but honestly, I should've expected nothing less from a big budget movie like this.
Dialogue delivery
While the acting itself wasn't exactly bad, the line delivery was not the best because many actors were speaking in languages that were not their native tongue.
When this movie first came out, I remember my mom saying that apparently Wang Leehom had to be "retrained" in Chinese because he probably had a heavy Taiwanese accent.
Anyway, most of the actors had accents that honestly bothered me a little bit.
Chin Kar-lok, who played Lao Cao, probably had the worst Mandarin accent. He is a Hong Kong actor, but his pronunciation was so bad, oh my god. As for Tony Leung and Wang Leehom, they had Hong Kong and Taiwanese accents, which honestly did bother me, but at that point I realized I was going to have to deal with it. Tang Wei spoke perfect Mandarin so no issues there.
Tang Wei and Wang Leehom also spoke Cantonese, and had a bit of an accent. Speaking of which, it was curious that their characters were speaking Mandarin in Hong Kong, but I suppose they had to do that to appeal to the mass market.
Tang Wei spoke Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, English, and also attended a Japanese class during this movie, with most dialogue in Mandarin and Shanghainese. Honestly, I'm a fan of the international movie experience. If it makes sense for characters to speak a certain language, just go ahead with it and have subtitles for the audience members.
I think the accents were probably my biggest concern with the movie because it did distract me from enjoying the movie.
Sexual content
The affair between Mr. Yee and Wang Jiazhi became sexual when she went to Shanghai. Now, these sex scenes were INCREDIBLY EXPLICIT. I don't know if it was necessary to be as explicit as the movie was, but it did get the point across that Wang Jiazhi felt like she was being taken control of by Mr. Yee. I don't know if this point would've stood if the scenes were less explicit, but I think it could've.
Censorship
On Wikipedia, I looked up what scenes were censored. I could understand the reasoning behind cutting out the violence and sex scenes. While not ideal, they could still be cut out while preserving a coherent story.
However, I read that the dialogue was modified so that Wang Jiazhi did not betray the resistance by warning Mr. Yee. This would've changed the movie entirely. I know it was probably done to show that Wang Jiazhi was a patriot and therefore a worthy heroine, but that was the complete opposite of what the end was supposed to be.
Characters
There were several supporting characters but I'm only going to speak about a handful of them.
Wang Jiazhi
Wang Jiazhi was the spy sent to lure Mr. Yee into the trap. Through their affair, she started to fall in love with Mr. Yee, and eventually betrayed her own resistance group to save Mr. Yee, at the expense of her own life.
When Wang Jiazhi vented to Lao Wu about how frustrated she felt, she explained that Mr. Yee kept taking and taking from her. In the sex scenes, we saw that Wang Jiazhi would sometimes cry during sex, presumably due to both physical and emotional fatigue.
Due to this description, I felt that Wang Jiazhi was more of a hostage of Mr. Yee's control than a lover. What I mean is that I didn't believe that she was necessarily in love with him the way that normal people fall in love with each other. Instead, he reached a part of her that no one had ever reached (through their sexual and romantic relationship) and that was enough for him to have control over her that no one else could, not even her country.
Wang Jiazhi was shown to be struck by a sudden sense of overwhelming love for Mr. Yee when she put on her custom made diamond ring. Honestly, it felt kind of materialistic, but I think Wang Jiazhi was not supposed to be the moral upright person that she used to be after she got involved with Mr. Yee. In this moment, Wang Jiazhi gave away her resistance group, despite all of the progress they made, because she could no longer work both sides.
Kuang Yumin had feelings for Wang Jiazhi while they were students, but he only kissed her three years later when she was knee deep in the affair with Mr. Yee. Wang Jiazhi said he should've done so three years earlier, and stormed off. If she'd been romantically involved with Kuang Yumin years ago, I do think that her undercover operation would've gone differently. Wang Jiazhi was a virgin prior to the operation, and so her relationship with Mr. Yee was her first love, which many people always have a soft spot for.
As I mentioned above, Wang Jiazhi had taken out her poison pill, but did not ingest it. My guess is that while warning Mr. Yee was an unpatriotic act, she wanted to die a proud patriot like the rest of her classmates. When kneeling on the ground ready to be executed, Kuang Yumin gaave Wang Jiazhi a look. I don't know if the classmates knew that Wang Jiazhi was responsible for warning Mr. Yee, but I think that Kuang Yumin knew that they'd lost her long ago. I think the look was a little bit of resentment, because she didn't deserve to die a patriot's death like her classmates did.
Mr. Yee
Mr. Yee was a mysterious man who worked for the Japanese side in the Sino-Japanese war, which is of course very unpatriotic.
Lao Wu had mentioned that they'd sent spies to seduce him before, but he'd grown suspicious of them and had killed them. Knowledge of this information made me a little wary of Mr. Yee's love for Wang Jiazhi. After having killed two mistresses for being spies, shouldn't he have been more suspicious of her?
That being said, in the end, he did kill Wang Jiazhi. We didn't know if he'd loved his two mistresses too, and killed them with hesitation as well. So perhaps he was just a man who fell in love easily.
That being said, what is love for Mr. Yee? The first time he had sex with Wang Jiazhi, it was basically rape. He was extremely rough and controlling. Did he love, or did he just seek control? Perhaps he was afraid of falling in love because love exposed a vulnerability, and by taking control of love and turning it into lust and control, he was trying to cover up that vulnerability.
I think we were supposed to believe that Mr. Yee was in love with Wang Jiazhi, but knowing his past history and what his love style was, I think perhaps he mistook his love for power as romantic love.
Mrs. Yee
I think she might've been aware of Mr. Yee's affairs, but didn't know who his mistresses were. Mr. Yee had two mistresses before Wang Jiazhi, so this was old hat to him. However, we saw that Mr. and Mrs. Yee spent a lot of time apart, and Mrs. Yee spent most of her time playing mahjong, so it is probably not inconceivable that she was unaware of all of his affairs.
In the end, she questioned Mr. Yee about what'd happened to Wang Jiazhi. She'd stayed in a guest room, but people had come in to take her things. Of course it was hard for Mrs. Yee not to realize that Wang Jiazhi was a political threat to their family. Mr. Yee instead told her to believe that "Mrs. Mai" had just returned to Hong Kong. And I think Mrs. Yee was willing to be blind to the obviously shady dealings as long as her safety was preserved.
Kuang Yumin
Kuang Yumin was always a patriot. His older brother had been killed in war so his family didn't let him fight. The only way he knew how to help out was to star in patriotic plays. When he and his classmates were still in Hong Kong, they set up an amateur operation to kill Mr. Yee, and it kind of worked, until Mr. Yee moved to Shanghai.
Three years later, Kuang Yumin had become a KMT agent and recruited Wang Jiazhi back for another shot at getting to Mr. Yee. He'd barely met Mr. Yee so it was easy for him to hate him, for him to paint him as a no-good evil unpatriotic scumbag.
For Kuang Yumin, I think patriotism was kind of a safe place for him. As long as he prioritized patriotism, then he'd be doing good. I think that was why he never acted on his attraction to Wang Jiazhi. It would distract them from doing the real important work.
Three years later, when he was more in tune with his emotions, and he saw that Wang Jiazhi was stressed about being undercover, he tried to comfort her, and kiss her to show her that he was by her side. But the ship had sailed and she was no longer receptive to his advances.
While I don't think that Kuang Yumin hated Wang Jiazhi for rejecting him, I think he would always judge her for giving away their operation (if he knew that she'd done so).
Lao Wu
He was the leader of the operation in Shanghai, but was ultimately not caught when Mr. Yee's men uncovered the resistance group.
I don't remember if he said that Mr. Yee's previous two mistresses were his own spies, but I do believe that he would go on to operate more undercover missions to get to Mr. Yee and other country traitors. I think this goes on to show how many lives are lost in secret when it comes to espionage operations.
Lao Cao
He was working for Mr. Yee in Hong Kong. When he discovered the students' attempt to assassinate Mr. Yee, he wanted in on the operation, only for the money. The students ended up killing him. The scene itself was pretty jarring. The students held him down so that Kuang Yumin could stab him, and some of the other students stabbed him too. The entire scene was done without music, so all of the sounds were just the sounds of frustration at trying to subdue Lao Cao. I think this event showed the students that what they were doing was not supposed to be a fun summer project. It was real, about life and death.
Themes
Sleeping with the lover
Wang Jiazhi was having sex and falling in love with Mr. Yee while also simultaneously planning his assassination. She wasn't even just sleeping with him to get information or money, Mr. Yee needed to be killed.
Of course it would make sense that over time, she would feel incredibly torn as she had to fall into Mr. Yee's love trap in order for any of this to work, but whether it was possible to climb out of the trap is another story.
Love and sex
What is shown as "love" in this movie tended to be lust a lot of the time. While Mr. Yee and Wang Jiazhi didn't have sex until Shanghai, their interactions up until then still had sexual undertones to them.
That was one of the reasons that I felt that Wang Jiazhi and Mr. Yee weren't necessarily in love with each other in the traditional sense. Wang Jiazhi was a virgion so Mr. Yee was her first sexual partner, and obviously he held a special place for her. As for Mr. Yee, he was very violent during sex, and after they began their affair, they often spent their time either having sex, or on materialistic things such as the diamond ring.
I think that Mr. Yee and Wang Jiazhi mistook what they had for love, but honestly, that might be realistic for many people in the real world. They enjoy something about another person and mistake it for romantic love between two souls, when it might be about something else.
Blindness
Characters had to be willfully blind to certain things in order to carry on living.
Wang Jiazhi was living two lives, and could only live one at a time. When she was a patriot, she had to compartmentalize her love for Mr. Yee. And when she was with Mr. Yee, she had to pretend that she wasn't simultaneously planning his murder.
In the end, Mr. Yee had to pretend that he never loved Wang Jiazhi in order to ensure his own survival. He didn't even want to see her, because he knew it wouldn't help him. If he saw her, he might've empathized with her and let her go, and she would probably be used to get back at him again.
Mrs. Yee was asked by Mr. Yee to pretend that Wang Jiazhi had just gone back to Hong Kong. Both of them knew this was clearly not the case, but if Mrs. Yee wanted to survive, she must'nt ask any questions.
Colourful ring
The Wikipedia page for the movie pointed out this clever double meaning in the title. The word for "lust" in the title of the movie also means colour, and the word for "caution" can also mean ring.
So "Lust, caution" can also mean colourful ring, which refers to the ring that Mr. Yee bought for Wang Jiazhi as a symbol of his love. However, as mentioned above, Wang Jiazhi being moved by the ring did feel a little materialistic, and perhaps the colourful ring wasn't necessarily meant to represent love, but the sexual and passionate relationship that they had.
Overall
This was a good viewing experience because I did empathize with Wang Jiazhi who was plotting Mr. Yee's murder but also having to sympathize with him in order to love him. That being said, I also thought it was a hard watch because I was rooting for Mr. Yee to be taken out, and I felt that Wang Jiazhi was getting herself into more danger as she fell further into lust with him. But I can't put it all on her because she being torn between two sides, both of which she wanted to please. She wanted to be a patriot because that was what she decided as a student, but sex with Mr. Yee ignited a part of herself that she'd never known about, and she couldn't help but keep coming back.