영화 ≪색|계≫의 공간성 연구

Abstract

The movie Lust|Caution, which was first screened in 2007 by director Li An, opened up many controversies on the day of its release. First, the main plot that the spy who was about to assassinate the head of the pro-Japanese government was in love with him, was more than enough to buy anger from the nationalists. Not only that, the film depicted their relationship with sexuality and thus sexualism also became the center of the controversy. For this reason, it was difficult to discuss the movie outside these two frames: nationalist view and sexuality. However, Lust|Caution requires a deeper level of analysis. Lust|Caution not only depicted the emotions of the characters delicately portrayed by the author Zhang Ai Ling in the original novel brilliantly, but also reenacted the city Shanghai in the 1940s thoroughly; this brought authenticity to the space within the film. In this context, this paper focuses on the spatiality within the movie Lust|Caution, and how the space affects the emotion and identity of the people in the film. In particular, this paper explores the meaning of the physical space of Shanghai in the film through comparing with the original novel. The goal of this study is to study how the spatiality (which includes both the notion of abstract space such as a space of a person’s psychological mind, and physical space such as various places in the city Shanghai) of the film contributes to depicting the power relation and the tense emotional tension between the characters.