Taiwan-born director Ang Lee's erotic spy thriller "Lust, Caution" won the Venice Film Festival's top Golden Lion award yesterday, two years after he captured the same prize here with "Brokeback Mountain."

Brian De Palma won the 11-day festival's award for best direction for his "Redacted," a film about the Iraq war.

Lee's film is set against the backdrop of Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II.

In the film, an idealistic young acting troupe in Hong Kong, driven by patriotic fervor, drafts a naive plot to assassinate a Chinese official collaborating with the Japanese during World War II. Their star performer delves into the role of seductress as an escape from the emptiness of her father's abandonment and mother's death.

Her pursuit of a cruel, aloof man takes her from Hong Kong to Shanghai at the height of the Japanese occupation -- and her deception becomes her reality.

"Lust, Caution," which contains explicit sexuality, has been given an NC-17 rating in the United States, banning viewers under 17. The film also does not shrink from a graphic portrayal of violence. The movie is due out in the United States at the end of September.

"Brokeback" also had strong scenes as it told the homosexual love story between two cowboys in the American West.

Lee said he was dedicating his prize to Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish director who died in July at age 89.

Winning the Golden Lion for a second time in three years "is a wild one, which frightens me, like the film" "Lust, Caution," Lee said at the ceremony.

Taiwan's United Daily News quoted Lee as saying the sex scenes were necessary in depicting the poignant love and fierce hostility between the lead characters.

"They first hate and then love each other, a love that in turn generates hatred," said Lee. "If the scenes were less direct, the audience would fail to get it."

(Agencies)