The American Spectator : Lust, Caution

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Lust, Caution

By James Bowman on 10.8.07 @ 12:02AM

Ang Lee's superb new picture is easily the finest of 2007.

p>There's a wonderful poem about adultery called "Story of a Hotel Room" by the mysterious English poet, Rosemary Tonks, which ends like this: br> /p> blockquote> em>... someone should have warned us br> That without permanent intentions br> You have absolutely no protection br> If the act is clean, authentic, sumptuous, br> The concurring deep love of the heart br> Follows the naked work, profoundly moved by it. /em> /blockquote> br> Miss Tonks disappeared from public view some 30 years ago. Some say she joined a fundamentalist Christian cult. But she left behind this rebuke to sexual "liberation" that, for our world, is the dirty secret sex used to be. Occasionally other artists give us a glimpse of it, but the last place we might expect to see one is at the movies -- for which sex "without permanent intentions" has become the stock in trade. That's why Lust, Caution (

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topics:
Trade, Hollywood, Movies

About the Author

James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.