It would sound glib to call this a REALM OF THE SENSES for millennium's end but that's the comparison that comes to mind. The movie's English title is explained in the shattering last line. In Seoul, the eighteen years old student Y (Tae Yeon Kim) decides to meet the thirty-eight years old sculptor J (Sang Hyun Lee) and loose her virginity with. The pared-down visual style gives the movie an edge and intensity, as if you're watching real people in a documentary rather than a fiction film. I for one found it exquisitely erotic (and frequently sweetly funny with the lovers' DIY approach to S&M), even - or especially, perhaps - in its more extreme moments, all of which handled beautifully by the two non-professional leads. Not that they would allow themselves to be seduced by this deeply moving yet quietly disturbing film in the first place. What sets this film apart from other recent releases that have incorporated hardcore footage as part of their narrative (like the astonishing BAISE-MOI or Lars Von Trier's THE IDIOTS) is that here there is actual warmth and sensuality to the copulation sequences, even when the protagonists are beating the feces out of each other, making it much harder one presumes for moralists to condemn on grounds of lacking humanity or compassion. In a sense it is, considering how much of the film's running time is devoted to fairly explicit (at times clearly non-simulated) sexual encounters. Kim Tae Yeon, Lee Sang Hyun: Highly controversial in its native Korea. This often startling account of a progressively S&M tinged love affair (and, yes, that is the right word for it) between an 18 year old schoolgirl and a married man twice her age remains currently banned in its native South Korea where it's considered pornographic.
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January 2023
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