Lust, Caution

[jake_fink]

A pretty trailer for the film set in 1940s Shanghai and directed by Ang Lee... but why no dialogue? Are they afriad fo scaring off the audience with - gasp - subtitles?

http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/lustcaution/trailer/

 

[AlanC]

Looks good. I didn't miss the dialogue. I think the trailer worked well as is.

fftopic: I highly recommend Ang Lee's Ride With the Devil. My favorite movie of his.

 

[LocktownDog]

fftopic: I highly recommend Ang Lee's Ride With the Devil. My favorite movie of his.

I'll second that. It was surprisingly good.

As for the trailer, I can't say I even noticed the lack of dialogue. Looks really nice as it was.

Richard

 

[Tomasso]

but why no dialogue? Are they afraid of scaring off the audience with - gasp - subtitles?

Well, it would have been misleading to have Don LaFontaine narrate the trailer and who would understand it if it were in Mandarin. So, they used subtitles in the trailer. [huh]

 

[jake_fink]

Well, it would have been misleading to have Don LaFontaine narrate the trailer and who would understand it if it were in Mandarin. So, they used subtitles in the trailer. [huh]

There were no subtitles in the trailer, nor was there the sound of a human voice, just music. [huh]


Ride With the Devil was a a very good film.

 

[Tomasso]

There were no subtitles in the trailer, nor was there the sound of a human voice, just music. [huh]

I was unable to click on the link you provided but the narrative text on this trailer reads,"In occupied Shanghai....................An ordinary girl.........Was given an extraordinary mission........etc." [huh]

 

[jake_fink]

I was unable to click on the link you provided but the narrative text on this trailer reads,"In occupied Shanghai....................An ordinary girl.........Was given an extraordinary mission........etc." [huh]

But those aren't subtitles. I meant to suggest that the distributor was fearful that a film in Mandarin with English subtitles might fail to attract an audience in North America, so they presented the trailer without dialogue so as not to take the risk. The text running through the trailer is presented as a series of intertitles, which is common for trailers.

Anyway, I just watched it again, and it looks better to me now than it did this morning.

 

[Feraud]

The production looks great. Ang Lee is a very versatile director.

 

[Pok 9'er]

Ang Lee

Ang Lee is a great director and this type of movie is what he excels at so I look forward to seeing it.

 

[Tomasso]

I meant to suggest that the distributor was fearful that a film in Mandarin with English subtitles might fail to attract an audience in North America, so they presented the trailer without dialogue so as not to take the risk.

Well, you're probably right. I know that when I see the film and the first subtitle appears at least one person in the audience will be heard to complain, "Oh, it's in subtitles."

 

[imoldfashioned]

I saw the trailer for this today when I saw "Becoming Jane"--it looked fabulously lush on the big screen with clothes (both for men and women) to die for. I'm definately planning on going when this is released.

 

[The Wolf]

No dialogue, no subtitles

That is a common practice. When the trailer for Brotherhood of the Wolves (the name caught me. ) was on TV I noticed there was no dialogue and it had me wondering. Sure enough at the end of the trailer where it shows the credits was written "Le Pacte des Loups" in small type. Then someone told me he waited in line to see the movie and when he got to the front he was told the movie was in French so he went home, annoyed that he couldn't watch it.
I've also had people upset that Pan's Labrynth was in Spanish. No way they could watch the sub-titled movie because they don't speak Spanish. That was when I realized the trailers had no dialogue.
I could go on about about other ways trailers try to make a movie look different than it is but that would be way fftopic:

Sincerely,
the Wolf

 

[nyx]

I watch a lot of films with subtitles, because my mom's Chinese, but I don't speak it, and for the most part I usually don't mind them. But, as much as I enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth, I did have a bit of trouble with the subtitles because they were going so fast in certain points.

What's worse is my mom was watching it with me, and since her English is so bad, I had to read the subtitles out loud to her while the movie was going. :eusa_doh:

 

[Mr. Rover]

I started seeing articles in Chinese magazines for this movie back in April when I visited Shanghai. I was drooling over the costumes....and the girl is cute, too.

 

[SarahLouise]

I thought I'd bump this as the UK release is next week (4th January).

I am really looking forward to seeing this! The still photos on IMDB and trailer look beautiful. Has anybody from the US seen this and what did you think?

 

[ITG]

Heads up-It comes out on DVD in February in the US.

 

[PADDY]

Film Review:

From Time Out Magazine, London.

There’s a superb and important early scene in Ang Lee’s absorbing spy romance, set on a stylised (studio-shot) Hong Kong tram in 1939, as a young troupe of Chinese actors board, flushed with the rousing success of that night’s patriotic play. (The Japanese have already occupied their homeland, British-run Hong Kong is soon to fall.) The exhilarated lead character Wong Chia Chi (a remarkable, film-dominating debut performance by newcomer Wei Tang) thrusts her head out the window to taste the rain, as if to make physical and personal the night’s small triumph. You see in that moment how the innocent young actress may be persuaded, in patriotic duty, to adopt an alias, spy on and seduce, in order to kill Tony Leung’s collaborationist chief of police.

You could call Lee’s Chinese-language version of Eileen Chang’s novella a revisionist wartime thriller. Its sub-Brechtian moments are muted, but it is more than happy to pay self-conscious attention to the period setting, design and clothes to highlight, in echo of David Hare’s ‘Plenty’, the seductive role of dress as disguise and mask. Like Hare (with his OAS volunteer, Kate Nelligan), Lee is interested in applying an emotional and psychological realism to his heroine’s incredible bravery. It seems, in wartime, some are able to assume grave responsibilties, but – as Lee’s film quietly and provocatively suggests – the actions of those that do make mockery of conventional, sex-based, notions of what constitutes courage, honour, love or even patriotism itself. In this sense, the real battlefield, the genuine theatre of truth, in ‘Lust, Caution’ is the bed – the sex – in the arranged flat three years later in Shanghai, something of a last tango wherein Leung’s previously almost obsequiously mannered ‘traitor’ shows his true colours, and Miss Wong, under her alias Mrs Mak, is transformed by the ever-present knowledge that discovery is death. It’s not a companionable film – Lee’s directorial discipline, objectivity and lack of expressionist touch in the use of either Rodrigo Prieto’s camerawork or Alexandre Desplat’s score can push the viewer close to outsider-dom or voyeurism – but its dark romanticism lingers in the mind.

 

[PADDY]

Loved it!!

 

[PADDY]

Just loved the Shanghai and HK of 30's and 40's...

 

[Lady Day]

But those aren't subtitles. I meant to suggest that the distributor was fearful that a film in Mandarin with English subtitles might fail to attract an audience in North America, so they presented the trailer without dialogue so as not to take the risk.

Bingo. A lot of foreign language films to be released in the US have trailers often created with no dialogue cause it can be a 'turn off' to people. Pan's Labyrinth comes to mind. Which I consider funny, cause the people who would watch that film dont care/ would realize its forign language film and there will be subtitles. :eusa_doh:
LD