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Rating: Every time I think about it, I feel sick.
Jang Sun-Woo was one of the most free-spirited, anarchic, and profound Korean directors of the '90s (his memorable debut "Seoul Jesus", where the New Testament is staged in a decadent Seoul amidst drug dealers and prostitutes, is unforgettable), who in 2002 found himself behind the camera for one of the most expensive Korean films ever: "Resurrection", a trashy sci-fi blockbuster that would allow him to pay off his mortgage and devote himself to more personal projects. After all, how could a film with shootouts, explosions, and special effects not rake in cash? How could it not appeal to the general public (at least locally), a film from its territory with a budget equivalent to that of Matrix and aimed at maximum entertainment?
The production and Jang Sun-Woo himself were convinced of this. But no: the film was a terrible failure. Even at home, no one watched it. The critics slammed it mercilessly, and while the film was released in our country, it went completely unnoticed. From that moment, the crazy director vanished from the scene and for eleven years hasn't worked on any project.
Shortly before, however, in 1999, Jang presented at the Venice Festival an extraordinary and ridiculed work: "Lies" (also released in Italy under the title "Bugie", but only on VHS - if you search well enough, however, you'll find a rare version dubbed in our language).
A film that is still controversial today, delivering brutally violent punches and leaving viewers dumbfounded.
But what is Lies? We're talking about a film based on the novel by a Korean writer jailed for obscenity that tells the tender relationship that develops between an eighteen-year-old girl (who in Korea is NOT of legal age) and a forty-year-old artist in a marital crisis.
Sorry but I call it love? PLEASE.
"Lies" shocked the entire Venice audience with an impressive spontaneity to say the least. Because no, it is not a romantic film. It isn't even crude provocation. What truly unsettled the masses, beyond the extreme and explicit visual nature of the film itself, is the despair that permeates these 90 cursed minutes.
There is no love, no feeling in this forbidden story. What binds the two characters isn't even sex: it is despair. Desperation to find human contact where it is impossible to find it. The despair that unites two characters facing the abyss of communication: a young girl eager for her first experiences and a man who has seen his life as a colossal failure.
Let's be clear: "Lies" is not a gentle film. "Lies" is animalistic, wild, rotten inside. If one doesn't start watching it prepared, it is impossible to appreciate it. We are talking about a wonderfully complex film, where a multitude of profound, current, incredibly depressing themes collide.
The characters ARE NOT human beings. They are pawns, puppets, and as such, they don't even have their own names (they call each other by initials: J and Y) as they seek in the tragedy of their existence something worth living for. Their sick, grotesque behavior is a distorted education to sex: their search goes beyond human, beyond knowledge, where caresses and kisses mean nothing more because they've already said everything.
Masochism? Sadomasochism? The film shows this, but DOES NOT speak of this: it is a descending parable of the human being, of the soul. Nothing is staged as eroticism, nothing is believable because it doesn't need to be. The lives in "Lies" are grotesque, surreal, incredible: they become pure nihilism, where there resides a total rejection of growth, discovery, emotion. A place is created where the meaning of life lies in the possession of a body, translated into an exhausting ritual of showcasing the places of the flesh (and those who watch the film will understand what I'm talking about) as if it were a competition, a conquest. A competition where, however, there seem to be no winners. And so they keep pushing further, always more, until destruction.
They seek the tangible without ever finding it and, inexorably, they fail.
They want to be more than others, better than those who are unable to understand.
All accompanied by a restless, suffocating direction that leaves no breath to either the viewer or the protagonists. Jang Sun-Woo stages a wonderful game of metacinema, giving significance to the very title. "Lies" are not only those told by the husband to the wife but also what Jang Sun-Woo tells the viewer.
A symbolic scene is when the actress is framed while walking at night. She stops and bursts into tears. And then everything stops: Jang Sun-Woo and his crew appear in front of the camera and console her. She is crying not as a character but as the body of the actor: the scene she just shot was too intense and degrading.
In that key moment, the entire function of the film falls apart to enter into another: sometimes it's not only cinema that's a lie, but life itself. Lies that the characters tell themselves just to continue living, lies in relating to others (the girl who tells her best friend what she's doing as if it were a boast, a transgressive thing when in reality she is suffering).
Beneath the surface of the "cursed" film, the masterpiece is staged. An extremely complex, destabilizing, and furious film. So desperate and dirty that the first time I saw it, many years ago, I couldn't sleep at night. Now it ranks among my desert island films.
A masterpiece that, however, is absolutely not recommended to anyone.
Decide for yourself whether you want to approach it or not.
I do not take this responsibility.
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