Lies

Released Jul 28, 2000

1h 52m

Drama

List

54%

Tomatometer

13 Reviews

52%

Audience Score

500+ Ratings

Y and J embark on a sexual odyssey toward the realms of obsession and sadomasochism. No common love affair, theirs tests the limits of both body and mind. Intense desires drive them into a relationship that revolves around pain, pleasure and unavoidable lies.

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Owen Gleiberman

Entertainment Weekly

Rated: A

Sep 7, 2011

Full Review

Empire Magazine

Rated: 3/5

Apr 4, 2011

Full Review

Mick LaSalle

San Francisco Chronicle

Rated: 0/4

Feb 21, 2001

Full Review

Guy MacPherson

Apollo Guide

Rated: 76/100

Dec 31, 2005

Full Review

Film Threat

Rated: 2/5

Dec 6, 2005

Full Review

Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

Rated: 3/5

Jul 16, 2005

Full Review

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dustin d

Lies is a porno vaguely disguised as an art house film. The banal story was clearly written as a weird middle-aged man's fantasy. The writer doesn't understand women or humans in general. I highly doubt an 18-year-old virgin would immediately jump in the sack with a skinny, creepy, greasy loser 20 years her senior upon first meeting him when there are plenty of horny boys her own age at her high school. The movie purportedly is about the psychology of obsession. This is an excuse to show porno in an indie movie house. The movie has the psychological depth of a Skittles commercial. The sex scenes are long, repetitive, gratuitous, and off-putting. The filler between the sex scenes is boring and unrealistic. The movie inconsistently employs a documentary shooting style, but it is mostly incompetent. Behind the scenes interviews with the cast are spliced into the first 10 minutes or so, but nowhere else. This comes off as pretentious, but worse, destroys the immersion in the film by telling us this is all make-believe. Ditto the scene that continues revealing the crew after the action has ended. Jang Sun Woo, you are not Ingmar Bergman, you fuckin hack. The movie enjoys lingering on the uncomfortable reactions of bystanders outside the main couple's "romance," as if to say the bystanders, and the audience, by extension, are a bunch of vanilla squares, and probably hypocrites. While my definition of "sexy" is a loving relationship between a man and a woman on a Sunday night after church in missionary position with the lights off, as described in Leviticus, I don't think anyone would find this material exciting. I feel embarrassed for the female lead, and everyone else involved with this production should be ashamed of themselves. To call this a porno is also a tad too generous. Pornos generally have better production value, more attractive leads, more interesting stories, better dialogue, better music.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

This had to be the worst, stupidest film I've ever seen.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

01/17/23

Full Review

Audience Member

The raw shooting was an interesting style for the story. The film is also very conscious of how other people judge the main characters. While they are concerned about their appearance, the camera, too, gravitates toward wider shots that include other individuals in public while the duo conducts their affair. The sex does become repetitive, but through this repetition, we become more aware of the psychological experiences of the two lovers. The inclusion of directorial footage was also interesting and enhances the mood of what even the actors might have been going through.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/23/23

Full Review

Audience Member

My first time seeing Korean fetish. Was intrigued in the beginning, but eventually grew bored. It didn't help that the actors didn't really have any sex appeal at all. The story is sexy, though.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

01/26/23

Full Review

Audience Member

This South Korean drama explores the complex and unconventional relationship between a young woman and an older man. Some of the sex scenes are erotic, some not so much, but all of them have a rare honesty that you don't usually get in more mainstream films. They even keep their socks on sometimes which â surprise! â people actually do in real life. So this is brilliant as a character study, and as a surprisingly realistic exploration of S&M power dynamics, which aren't always what you'd expect. But the movie seems a bit unsure of what direction it wants to take, a flaw that's most prominent in the beginning when the action of the movie is interspersed with behind-the-scenes peeks of the actors, only for this experimental approach to be abandoned ten minutes later.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/12/23

Full Review

Audience Member

This movie is NOT for the squeamish or faint of heart, but it does explore strange fetishes in very unblinking fashion.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/12/23

Full Review

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Jang Sun-woo

Director

Lee Sang-hyun

J

Tae Yeon Kim

Y

Jeon Hye-jin

Woori

Hyun Joo Choi

G

Kwon Taek Han

Y's Brother

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Synopsis

Y and J embark on a sexual odyssey toward the realms of obsession and sadomasochism. No common love affair, theirs tests the limits of both body and mind. Intense desires drive them into a relationship that revolves around pain, pleasure and unavoidable lies.

Director: Jang Sun-woo
Producer: Park Keon Seop, Kim Moo Ryung
Screenwriter: Jang Sun-woo, Jang Jung II
Distributor: Cowboy Booking International
Production Co: Korea Films, Shincine Communications
Genre: Drama
Original Language: Korean
Release Date (Theaters): Jul 28, 2000, Original
Release Date (Streaming): Mar 8, 2016
Box Office (Gross USA): $61.9K
Runtime: 1h 52m
Sound Mix: Dolby SR, Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio: Flat (1.85:1)