Lies

Dir. Jang Sun-Woo. 1999. N/R. 115mins. In Korean, with subtitles. Lee Sang-Hyun, Kim Tae-Yeon.

Don't get me wrong: I'm no censorious prude. On the contrary, the phrase gratuitous nudity has always struck me as oxymoronic, and I have no objection whatsoever to the occasional explicit sex scene, e.g., the unsimulated shagging that served as the major selling point for Leos Carax's Pola X. Movies that attempt to straddle the line between art and pornography for their entire duration, however, have an unfortunate tendency to prove neither enlightening nor arousing. Lies, which depicts the sadomasochistic bond that gradually develops between a middle-aged sculptor and a virginal (initially, anyway) schoolgirl, manages the balancing act a bit more effectively than In the Realm of the Senses or Romance, but ultimately confirms that you can only watch other people fuck so many times—at least in a narrative context—before some sort of carnal/voyeuristic overload sets in.

In a sense, Lies bears an inverse relationship to this summer's An Affair of Love, a romance about two shy strangers who meet regularly at a hotel to enact an unnamed sexual fantasy. That film's protagonists were called merely He and She; here we have J (Lee) and Y (Kim), two variables in search of the perfect sexual equation. But where Affair created tension by withholding information, leaving its characters' kinks to the viewer's fertile imagination, Lies takes place almost exclusively in anonymous hotel rooms, where J and Y immediately get naked and commence frantically groping and kissing and whipping one another. Though the pair eventually trades roles, with Y switching from bottom to top and J from top to bottom, the vast majority of the picture is conflict free, and hence drama free. They meet; they screw; they separate. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Early on, director Jang seems to have something much more complicated (and potentially really annoying) in mind. The film opens with interviews with the two actors, who discuss their reluctance about taking part in such an emotionally and physically volatile production; and a few subsequent scenes feature similarly reflexive devices: crew members stepping into the frame and yelling "Cut!"--that sorta thing. Before long, however, these self-conscious interludes mysteriously vanish, leaving only scene after scene of someone shuddering in ecstasy and agony as (s)he gets a broom handle to the posterior. Yeah, I know—sounds like the perfect date movie. Don't say I didn't warn you. (Opens Fri; see Index for venues.)—Mike D'Angelo