The director seems to acknowledge as much early on, when he repeatedly breaks up the narrative with behind-the-scenes vignettes. In one, actor Lee Sang Hyun offers his interpretation of the film; in another, actress Kim Tae Yeon wonders how she'll handle the frequent demands for nudity. Most disturbingly, one segment documents the aftermath of a scene in which she seems to have broken down completely, sobbing uncontrollably even after the director is heard to yell "Cut!"

Her distress is understandable. She's performing in a film that requires her to cheerfully simulate vaginal, anal and oral sex, to submit willingly to beatings and lashings, and to defy the government-dictated mores of her culture. Jang's decision to underscore this emotional jeopardy as the film gets underway is a curious one, particularly since he subsequently abandons that tactic.

To be sure, Lies invites scrutiny of its performers. The scenes of intercourse are well-lit but clumsy, with both participants struggling to tear off their clothes and assume the proper positions. The coupling is photographed dispassionately, making the eroticism clearly that of a voyeur, rather than a participant. In fact, an early shot has the camera peeking tentatively around a corner to gaze upon the sex act in progress, but then retreating slightly when Sang's face comes into view. For the film's duration, the two wiry, bony bodies entangle, disentangle, and then tangle again. Genital areas are not clearly on display, but are seen in glimpses and shadow. And while I didn't see any clear indication of unsimulated intercourse, a couple of scenes have a, er, striking verisimillitude.

The story follows "Y," an 18-year-old student who instigates a sexual relationship with "J," a married sculptor 20 years her senior. Their romps begin with conventional sex, as J deflowers Y missionary style, then proceed through the major coital configurations before settling into a sado-masochistic routine that has J flogging Y across the ass, and then eventually trading places with her to take his beating like a man. Despite bedroom tactics that raise welts on the flesh of both characters, the film never crosses out of the realm of the consensual -- if anyone's being exploited, it's clear that they're entirely willing victims.

"They say the devil has no smell," J mutters in voiceover after sniffing the armpit of his young lover. "Maybe she's the devil in disguise." Later, Y jokes about cutting his penis off and carrying it with her. (The devil, you say?) If such portents combine with the film's ass-up sensibility to suggest In the Realm of the Senses as directed by the Marquis de Sade, they're likely meant only to tweak the film's critics, as the resolution of this love affair isn't nearly as melodramatic as I feared. As the closing voiceover suggests, the real subject of Lies is the honesty of erotic give-and-take and, I guess, the tragedy of propriety.