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Last month Lust, Caution (Se, Jie) won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the 64th Venice Film Festival. Director Ang Lee’s erotic spy thriller stars Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and novice actress Tang Wei, and is based on a story by Eileen Chang. Directing his first Mandarin-language film since his hiatus in Hollywood, Lee returns to more familiar territory with a tale of a group of Shanghai students’ attempted assassination of a hanjian (traitor) working for the Japanese in the 1940s. Lee was delighted by the award, though admitted he was surprised to have won. It’s China release is scheduled for October 26.

Keeping with this steamy theme, the cinematic version of Foreign Babes in Beijing, a novel by Rachel DeWoskin based on her experiences as a soap opera star in China, should be hitting screens sometime next year. The book’s content makes for saucy subject matter, though DeWoskin does offer some social commentary. It remains to be seen how the story will translate onto celluloid, but the book’s satirical content should be in safe hands: Alice Wu, who brought us the film Saving Face in 2004, is expected to direct.

The Western perception of Chinese cinema has long been shaped by the high-kicking antics of kung fu stars in bamboo forests. So it’s refreshing that, for one month, Hollywood is going to look beyond triads, cheesy erhu soundtracks and wisecracking kung fu fighters in the third Hollywood China Film Festival (October 27-November 29). The films to be shown at the festival–such as The Longest Night in Shanghai, starring Zhao Wei–are based more on human relationships than heroics. The festival was launched in 2005 to celebrate the 26th anniversary of Sino-US diplomatic ties, and the festival’s focus on “relationships” is not a surprise given the context of its birth.

(Source: ebeijing.gov.cn)