(1999)
4
Jonathan Crow
Both Nagisa Oshima's erotic masterpiece Ai no Corrida and Catherine Breillat's lugubrious Romance brought both accolades from film critics and howls of outrage from conservative groups for being among the first works to seriously look at human sexuality and to graphically depict the actual sex act. Add to this list Jang Sun Woo's Lies. A tale of an obsessive affair between a schoolgirl and a middle-aged sculptor and their shared interested in S&M, Lies features not only plenty of nudity, exotic (and apparently authentic) couplings, and bruised flesh, but perhaps the first mainstream film treatment of corprophilia. At one point, Y, the schoolgirl, breathlessly exclaims, "After you ate my [excrement], I knew that you loved me." In Ai no Corrida and Romance, both directors seemed to deal with each film's racy subject matter by approaching the story with utter sobriety. While Oshima created a world of fleeting pleasure and profound tragedy, Breillat created one of unintentional ridiculousness. Jang, however, actually dares to use wit. J and Y's first encounter -- in which Y is deflowered in every way imaginable -- is punctuated with tersely descriptive intertitles reading "First Hole" and "Second Hole." As the film progresses, J's passion for whipping inches towards farce when he collects increasingly large and weird implements for flogging. The result is an odd mix of tones -- at one moment Jang has the audience laugh at the characters while in the next he expertly evokes the same characters' pathos. Both in terms of subject matter and in geographic proximity, Lies is often compared with Ai no Corrida, yet thematically this film has much more in common with Oshima's first great work, Cruel Story of Youth. Like that groundbreaking 1960 film, Lies features a couple who gleefully transgress all cultural norms and in so doing challenge a society hidebound by obsolete traditions and weakened by mindless consumerism. Though clearly not a film for all tastes, Lies is a daring and memorable work that delves into the dark recesses of human sexuality and finds something there to laugh at.
releases for Lies on AllMovie
Lies (1999)
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Lies
Fox Lorber
More
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January 22, 2002 |
