Opening at the Venice Film Festival on 29 August 2007 has a 2bit part for Anupam Kher as the "Indian Jeweller"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808357/

Trailer;

http://www.focusfeatures.com/clips/lust ... 80x260.mov

Ali

I simply love Tony Leung...he has never disappointed me in any of the movies I have watched of his be it INFERNAL AFFAIRS or any of the Wong-kar-wai movies.....look forward to this one.

Leung is amazingly versatile. Just watch him do Vietnamese in CYCLO or tough it up in THE LONGEST NITE (one of my all time favorite films). Too cool.

Thanks much. on my netflix queue now!

You're going to dig these Aarkayne. Please let us know what you thought after checking them out!

I just saw this over the weekend. Amazing film....really well paced and put together. True it is quite explicit but there are only a few scenes that reflect this, so if you can get past them it isn't as big a deal as they made it out to be. That said, this truly is a pan-Asian film. How many films can appease both Taiwan and Mainland Chinese audiences, as well as scenes in Japanese, Cantonese, and English (the shots of Tang Wei's character watching old Cary Grant movies totally appeals to the international arthouse crowd). Not to mention that midway through the film, Anupam Kher shows up for a scene. While his appearance is brief, it is absolutely critical to the film (plus he gets his own special appearance credit at the end). Fantastic stuff....Ang Lee has delivered another classic (this one has the epic scope of films like FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE, et al.) plus with Tony Leung doing some raw lovemaking scenes, you can't help think about his role in THE LOVER. Solid stuff.

Great, looking forward to this. Indian actors seem to be cropping up alot more in international films. Irfan Khan gave a good recent performance in "A Mighty Heart" and will also be in "the Darjeeling Limited". Still waiting for Mr Bachchan to make that appearance.



That was a different Tony Leung in the Lover. This Tony Leung is the same one in 2046, Infernal Affairs, Hard Boiled, etc.

You're absolutely right. My bad on the Tony Leung distinction. It's Tony Leung Chiu Wai in this one, not Tony Leung Ka Fai. I got confused b/c this role did remind me of the OTHER Leung.

You mean the other Tony Leung. Anyway alot is being made of the "explicit" nature of the scenes, I wonder if this film would be cut for the Hong Kong and China audiences because they have stricter censorship than Europe. Imagine a film shot in their land has to be censored for them, but can be shown fully uncut to the rest of the world. Someone had told me that "The Namesake" was cut for Indian audiences.

Yes - according to IMDB there is a censored version doing the rounds in Asia. I think 9 minutes have been cut to keep things decent.

From what I read, Ang Lee personally cut close to 30 minutes for the Mainland. That must definitely include some of the other content as well as the sex scenes are definitely not even close to being that long.

But it was left untouched for the HK and Taiwan markets, which is great news. It's showing there as Category III (HK) and R-18 (Taiwan). Other countries will definitely get cut versions, esp. places like Singapore.
http://talk.hsx.com/films/post.htm?0927 ... ardAHavens

I think HK and China is closer to India in the censorship area, with India being stricter. I think generally audiences in Asia will not be comfortable with the sex scenes especially if it's done by one of their top actors, so it has to be cut for them. But this sort of film will appeal very much to European audiences who are used to seeing "explicit" sex in their films. Maybe this even increases it's chances for winning awards at European film festivals?

Someone had mentioned in the media that this film was Ang Lee trying to be Wong Kar Wai. That it resembled more like a Wong Kar Wai film. But I understand that Ang Lee did Chinese films in his early days.

I'm not sure whether the Wong Kar-Wai comparison is apt....having seen the film, I feel it has more in common with such epics as Zhang Yimou's TO LIVE and FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE. Even then it is quite different, since it appeals directly to so many different Asian/Western audiences. Ang Lee seemed well aware of his audience and was able to tailor it in a crowd pleasing way to appeal to all of them while maintaining his style. Interestingly enough, this film is quite different from Ang's early Taiwanese works (but even if you look at PUSHING HANDS or WEDDING BANQUET, those straddled the line between East and West effectively). Those were more personal and small scale. I love how he's able to make such widely diverse films while maintaining the same themes. Plus all of his movies feature at least one notable food scene!