Lee's Lust, Pitt's Jesse Top Venice

There's nothing like a healthy dose of Lust to win the hearts of Italians. And we're not talking just about Brad Pitt.

Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, a sexually charged spy thriller set in WWII-era Shanghai, took home the prestigious Golden Lion on Saturday at the 2007 Venice Film Festival.

This marks the second time Lee has been awarded the fest's highest honor, with the Oscar winner's previous film, Brokeback Mountain, taking the Lion two years ago.

Lust, Caution, or Se, Jie in Chinese, is the first foreign-language picture for the Taiwanese native since 2001's martial-arts epic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The film is the second straight Asia-set film to win the top prize at Venice, the oldest film festival in the world still going strong in its 64th year.

In accepting the Golden Lion, Lee noted he was doing so "in the shadow of the passing of two great giants," Swedish director Ingmar Bergman—whom Lee saw while making Lust not long before Bergman's death on July 30 at age 89—and Italian auteur Michelangelo Antonioni, who passed away one day later.

"Ingmar hugged me the way a mother hugs a child," Lee said. "This hug was not for me, it was for you, the guardians of cinema."

Lust, Caution, starring Joan Chen, Indian star Anupam Kher, Chih-ying Chu and Tony Leung, follows a young woman who joins a college acting troupe and finds herself drawn into a deadly mission to assassinate a powerful political figure collaborating with the Japanese occupying the city during the war.

The Silver Lion for Best Director went to Brian DePalma for his Iraq war docudrama Redacted, based on the true story of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl raped and murdered by American soldiers.  The film also delves into how the modern media sanitizes the brutal nature of that conflict for public consumption.

In a bit of a surprise, Brad Pitt edged out costar Casey Affleck and snag Best Actor for the Andrew Dominik-helmed western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Meanwhile, Cate Blanchett scored Best Actress for her cross-dressing turn as Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' offbeat  biopic, I'm Not There. Blanchett is one of six actors who take turns playing the folk-rock icon.

Pitt—who attended his movie's premiere earlier in the week with Angelina Jolie—and Blanchett were MIA for the awards ceremony, but the latter sent along a note of appreciation.

"I'm sorry I can't stand here throwing my arms around Todd, weeping just like a woman," she said in a statement.

Haynes—the director of such acclaimed films as 2002's Far from Heaven, 1998's Velvet Goldmine and 1995's Safe—received a special jury prize for his work.

A second special jury award was given to Franco-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche for The Secret of the Grain, a drama following a Tunisian immigrant family living in France. The film's star, Hafsia Herzi, was named Best Young Actress.

Best Screenplay went to venerable British filmmaker Ken Loach for It's a Free World, dramatizing the exploitation of immigrant workers in the U.K.

"Of course a screenplay means absolutely nothing if you look into an actor's eyes and don't believe them," Loach said at the podium. "Most of all I'd like to thank the hundreds and hundreds of workers, legal and illegal," many of whom he interviewed while making the film.

Tim Burton, whose résumé includes Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Batman and Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, was bestowed a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement.

Legendary Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci was honored with a special Golden Lion Award to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Venice's first official wingding. The festival actually debuted in 1932, but it's only officially in its 64th year thanks to various interruptions, including World War II and local protests that caused several cancellations.