Time for more movie comparisons. This time, two WWII films involving lust, passion, and betrayal.
Lust: Caution. During WWII, a bunch of Chinese theater troupe students decide, in the midst of the Japanese occupation, to take on Yee, the Chinese chief of security. A girl, Wong (very cute) befriends Yee, ostensibly to spy on him and report back to the resistance on his plans, yet ends up in a love affair with him; quite cynically, her superiors and peers instruct her to get intimate with him if necessary, a plan she obeys with considerable reluctance. Eventually the intimacy reaches the point where we’re no longer sure if she’s still loyal to her group and mission, or whether she has switched sides out of loyalty to her lover. Remarkable! Plenty of nudity and soft-core sex (and the woman appears to be genuinely aroused). Very sexy, very well done.
Black Book. This is possibly, bar none, the most cynical WWII movie I’ve ever seen, far more than “Kelly’s Heroes”, which was more stupid than clever. It’s in Dutch with subtitles and has no one famous (at least not that experienced US audiences would recognize). It’s done by Paul Verhoeven, Mr. Robocop.
Some Dutch woman, Ellis de Vries, Jewish, has to infiltrate the top SS installation in that part of Holland. Remarkably, it’s April 1945 and somehow this area is still in German hands while Berlin is basically Russian territory, and Adolf Hitler is just days from blowing his brains out. The SS commander, Hauptsturmfuhrer (Captain) Muntze, quickly determines that Ellis is Jewish and figures out she’s a spy. But he likes her so much that he doesn’t blow the whistle on her [actually, it’s debatable whether Yee was “on to” Wong all along, or whether he only found out later; I suppose the viewer will have to make that call, as I couldn’t]. In fact, he turns out to be the most sympathetic character of the whole film. Even the Dutch resistance fighters turn out to be (A) anti-Semitic, (B) cynical, (C) not above dealing with the Nazis themselves when it’s in their best interests. One by one, several different mysteries are solved and who we thought of as heroes turn out to be far less so – how cynical do you have to be, that an SS officer is the HERO of the film. It’s entertaining for these twists alone. Also, there is lots of violence and lots of sex too. So it’s a juicy film.
As a bonus, I strongly recommend the following movie, not because of sex (which is fairly sparse in the film) but the overall plot and ultimate outcome are far more redeeming than those of either prior film:
The Lives of Others. The SS Captain from “The Black Book” returns as an East German playright, George Dreyman, in East Berlin in 1984 (shortly before Gorbachev took office and Glasnost/Perestroika came around). He’s been assigned for surveillance by Stasi’s top interrogator, Wiesler (who teaches a class on interrogation techniques at the Stasi training academy). As it happens, Wiesler grows fond of the playright and his actress girlfriend, whose lives he lives vicariously by eavesdropping on them. As he grows fonder of them, he grows considerably less fond of his superior, Grubitz (some careerist asshole played by a German dead ringer for Jeffrey Jones, who plays all those jerks in movies, notably the truant officer in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) and the culture minister, a fat, arrogant Hermann Goring lookalike who blackmails the girlfriend into an affair with him and almost ruins her relationship with Dreyman. The ending? Well, you’ll just have to see it for yourself, but I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.
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