To be fair, Desire's failure is in part due to the one tremendous challenge writer-director Kim Eung-soo has presented to his actors. Most scenes have absolutely no dialogue! Because of that, everyone feels stuck in a portentous moment — generally in couples or alone — where they somehow must convey whole worlds of feeling and reams of complicated history through sitting, standing, walking, staring blankly, disrobing, and getting slapped. Do the grunts of sex constitute a conversation? If so, you'll hear a whole monologue during the heterosexual anal sex scene.
So what's the mime show about? Well, Kyu-min (Ahn Nae-sang) is cheating on his wife (Choi Ban-ya) with a male hustler (Lee Dong-kyu) while the wife is cheating with the same hired help. And since everyone's sulking and making long faces— without a therapist in sight — you just know that things will end badly for all, even the neighbor (Jang So-yeon) who — pining on the sidelines — spends most of the movie modeling terrible wigs intended for nightclubs and Halloween. Truly, a wig is worth a thousand words...
As the one with the most screen time if not the most lines, Lee is constantly undressing, getting dressed or showering. Shakespearean verse, this is not. But Lee nevertheless mistakenly opts to let his body do the talking while his face remains a blank. Is he a cipher? Is he mysterious? Nope. One particularly unmemorable sequence has him stripping, covering his genitals with his hands, then putting his clothes back on for no apparent reason except it was in the script.
So what's the climax of this doubly dumb show? I guess it's the dinner party hosted by the philandering couple and attended by the rent boy and his neighbor/date. Furious to see the object of her affections with another FWB who isn't her husband, the wife snatches an ugly wig off her nemesis' head. Tears ensue. Orgasms, however, do not.
Note: A more interesting movie with no dialogue, and sex as its theme: Kim Ki-duk's Moebius.
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I just watched it and actually quite liked it. I'm surprised I find so few infos about the movie online. I was very doubty at the beginning and almost stopped it, because of the very slow tempo, and the unrealistic encounters of the protagonists all the time made me a bit disappointed. Then I began to get into the movie when I accepted that the director didn't want to show us a realistic story. That he was obviously playing with the fate of his protagonists, and led the movie more to the side of a metaphore. I just let him push the fate of his the characters the way he wanted and watched where it was leading. At the end, I just suffered that phones were too much in the center of "action". A phone, another phone, and nobody who ever talk into it. The film is all about the failure to connect with others, to make sense of what we want, to speak out or desire. What happens is not permitted, then it cannot enter the world of words. It all stays beyond words. The only remaining things being the suffering. Quite nihilist. The always half conscious wife was a bit weird too. It's like you want her to finish an act, or a sentence, or anything. But at the end I liked her character too. Her lost of control is also unspeakable. The photography is pretty amazing even without a very good camera. The music is also good.The main actor is really attractive and yes, his body speaking for him. He is like is little woodtoy, he has lost voice, or discourse. He has lost meanings. He makes connections only with sex and through creating desire on other. And the only attempt of connection, with his neighbor, is quickly a failure too. So if I was sometimes frustrated by the reactions of the characters, I wasn't bored. And they all play quite well. Maybe I was just a bit disappointed by the husband, who is too much in the shadow in my opinion.
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