Ang Lee spy film is surprise winner in Venice

By Mike Collett-White and Silvia Aloisi

VENICE (Reuters) - Taiwanese director Ang Lee's sexually explicit spy thriller "Lust, Caution" was the surprise winner of the top award at the Venice film festival on Saturday, just two years after he won with "Brokeback Mountain".

The movie is a World War Two thriller set in Shanghai featuring long and sometimes violent sex scenes which Lee has hinted were real.

The verdict means Asian directors have won the Golden Lion on the Lido waterfront for the last three years.

The Silver Lion for best director went to U.S. film maker Brian De Palma, whose "Redacted" shocked audiences with its brutal reconstruction of the real-life rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers in 2006.

Taiwan-born Lee told the glitzy red carpet prize ceremony that "Lust, Caution" took him to "some very difficult places.

"I have invited you to come along with me and in the end to stay down there with me ... You are the seven samurais, I needed your help," he added, addressing the seven-member jury.

The film is Lee's return to the theme of forbidden love after gay cowboy hit "Brokeback", but this time the setting is the teeming streets of 1940s Shanghai.

The film centers on a group of revolutionary students bent on killing a powerful political figure who collaborates with occupying forces during the Sino-Japanese war.  Continued...