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Who can figure Ang Lee?

Even now that he is sitting before me, looking like an overgrown schoolboy in a boxy tweed jacket and mismatched trousers, it seems impossible to fathom how this mild-mannered and self-effacing husband and father of two could also be one of the most versatile artistic powerhouses in contemporary Hollywood. No ball cap, no cigar, no egotism, or directorial histrionics here - all the guy gives are simple, thoughtful, soft-spoken answers to my rapid-fire questions. It is the Toronto International Film Festival, after all, and all we have are the requisite 10 minutes in a room at the InterContinental. I am harried, panicked, desperate to ask about the myriad of moments in his films that have moved me to delight or despair. Lee, on the other hand, is perfectly still, hands folded, regarding the situation from a distance, like a spectator rather than a subject.

This sort of enigmatic calm is a lovely human quality, but it is no help at all for the hungry reporter desperate for a sound bite. Within minutes, I am pulling my hair out. How to get an anecdote - or even a straight answer - out of the man who baffles the world by his refusal to be pinned down?

"I like to be a good film student and learn as much as I can," he says, in response to the old versatile-director question. "I'm an avid filmmaker."

Well, duh, I think. You're Ang Lee.

A Taiwanese-born graduate of New York University film school, Lee moved to the United States in 1975. His body of work, I probably don't need to tell you, is as brilliant as it is varied. What other contemporary director could move so seamlessly from period piece (Sense and Sensibility) to family drama (The Ice Storm) to fantasy adventure (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) to a comic-book adaptation like The Hulk?

In his latest offering, Lee takes on sex and suspense in the mannered world of Japanese-occupied China. It's a period, Lee says, that he has spent most of his life obsessed with, if only because it is so rarely depicted.

"It's a part of history that's regarded as shameful in China and Taiwan. The country was occupied and people lived under a collaborated government. Most people there have never seen images from that time - certainly not moving images. It's a taboo that's just opened."

While much advance ink has been spilled on the graphic nature of the sex (and it is fairly explicit), Lee says the idea of exposing the behind-the-scenes politics of Chinese history for an international audience seemed far more shocking in the broader scheme of his career.

"It's very scary," he says, laughing. "A lot more scary than portraying gay cowboys for America."

While it may be difficult at first to see any similarities between Lee's films, on closer inspection, a theme does emerge - specifically, that of the outsider or imposter. Just like the star-crossed lovers in Brokeback Mountain, the coupling in Lust, Caution occurs between two people with much to hide from their society and each other.

Tang Wei, a captivating newcomer from mainland China, plays a college student who becomes a resistance spy and the lover of a powerful collaborator.

"For this movie, I'd just entered the gate of performance," she told me in a later interview. "Ang helped me to hone those skills."

Despite their difference in age and gender, Lee said he strongly identifies with Wei's character in the film. "She has to make believe in order to survive and although it's an extreme example, I understand that. In her normal life she is an outsider, she's nothing.

"Similarly, I am an outsider to reality. I am an insider to the opposite of many cultures. I'm an insider to a tradition in classical Chinese culture that is like a forgotten dream and so I very much believe in movies and the make believe."

He mentions a scene in the movie in which Tang Wei sings a classical Chinese folk song to her cynical lover in a Japanese restaurant, causing him to weep. "That performance is something I very much identify with," he says. "In fantasy, I am the insider."

Membership clearly has its privileges, as Lee's fantasy world has led him to triumph in virtually every genre the medium has to offer.

"I didn't have a plan as a filmmaker," he insists. "I didn't have a checklist to say to the world I can do this and I can do that. It was never like that for me. If something hit me as interesting, I'd do it."

And is there any other type of fantasy this enigmatic outsider would like to try?

"Only comedy," he says. "I've never tried something pure and broad that doesn't mean anything. I'd like to."