Huang: What appealed to you about Chang ’ s story? Lee: Very little Chinese literature describes sex. [Chang’s story] is one of the few daring ones. It tells us what women get from sex. It scared me for quite a few years, but I decided to do it.
How was making " Brokeback Mountain " different from " Lust, Caution " ? The material of “Brokeback Mountain” is very far away from me. I mean, American gay cowboy, that’s as far as you get from my personal experience. I was able to make art out of it. Physically I was very relaxed making it. But with “Lust, Caution,” the materials, the characters and the textures are very close to me. It’s very intense physically. It reminds me where my culture comes from.
What was the hardest part? Well, obviously, the sex scenes. You can’t just take it easy because people make pornographic films. It’s very difficult physically and psychologically. People think you have the framework, and then you decide how deep you want to go with the sex scenes because they usually arefunctional. But to me how they landed decided how the movie would unfold. So I actually shot them relatively early. Then they served as the anchors to decide how to craft the second half of the story.
Philosophically, what is filmmaking to you? It’s the way I discover myself and understand the world.
