Movie color themes

Lust, Caution is a movie I am not familiar with, but now that I'm writing about it, I feel the need to rent it to see how color plays out.

In an article in Set Decorator Magazine, production designer Pan Lai explains how they came up with the palette for the movie.

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“Fortunately, the descriptions in the original short story also offered a direction for our palette:
‘…Her sleeveless cheongsam of electric blue moiré satin…

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A brooch fixed to the collar matched her diamond-studded sapphire button earrings….’

Therefore, I chose a blue color tone as the key theme for Lust, Caution and let the lead female character, Wong Chia Chi, take it throughout the movie’s time and space.

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The blue color scheme via Wong serves as the main melody to bridge the story’s five-year time span and the two locales: subtropical Hong Kong with its colonial influence under British rules and Shanghai under occupation and segregated by America, England, France, and Japan.”

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“We tried to maintain a low-key color tone throughout the movie.

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The color red was reserved for only a few places, to protect its volatile nature. It appears in the oleander outside Wong’s room in Hong Kong, on Wong’s lipstick in Shanghai, on the nail colors of the film’s married women characters, as key accessory points in the Mahjong scenes and—in pink—on the six-carat diamond ring that is so important to the climax of our story.” (source)

I find it fascinating to read about the underlying design motives for color decisions in movies. Next time you are watching a movie, test your attention to detail and see if you can pick out the color themes. It's a fun way to sharpen your color sensitivity.