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Wonderful character development!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Ardor is a South Korean film directed by Byun Young-Ju. It stars Yunjin Kim of Lost fame together with Lee Jong-Won and Gye Seong-Yong.It tell a powerful story of a housewife who engages in an adulterous relationship.A thirty-year-old housewife, Mi-heun, is visited by a woman in a red sweater. She smirks and tells Mi-heun that her husband is her lover. These few words take away and shatter Mi-heun's life as she knew it, a true terror on an unforgettable Christmas evening.Swept away by the peaceful, silent town of Butterfly Ville, Mi-heun and her family begin a new life as if nothing had happened. However, the aftermath of that night still haunts Mi-heun with headaches as she vexatiously tries to vent out her heartache, alone. But nothing seems to change. In-kyu is a not-so-busy country town doctor who enjoys fishing in the nearby lake. The rest of his time is spent on fishing girls out for sex. As the doctor is beginning to enjoy and is getting comfortable with his small town life¡¦he meets her.As Mi-heun sits blankly under the blazing sun at a rest stop, a sharp voice comes to her like an alarm and awakes her. She refuses him with all her body and might, but at the same time, falls into him with her entire body and soul.In-kyu gives Mi-heun an overwhelming answer to her question. When she felt like she was at the end of her ropes, she falls into a dangerous game of sex that would never allow for love. Unaware to herself, she starts to enjoy the lover's game more and more.Mi-heun's husband wants to make a pond outside their new house. Hyo-Kyung hopes to make the pond to raise some fish and live happily there, together, as a family. However, the one person who should be there sharing his small dream is not there. The lonely pond remains as Mi-heun is walking through the heavy woods that are found outside the only motel in town. What will become of the husband who waits for his wife, and the two star-crossed who choose the path of no return? Is there an end to their never-ending desires?Director Byun, acclaimed for her documentaries, makes a powerful feature debut with this unsettling look at one woman's attempt to re-build her life after all she believed to be true evaporates around her. Yunjin Kim is extraordinary in the lead role, creating a character that seems as mysterious to her as does to those around her.The movie is good one but not great enough to be a classic.

This film starts out very promising with a scene where a husband's lover visits the married couple's home and announces her position with frightening authority—on Christmas day, no less. After that it just rolls along with violins, heavy sighs and a plot that takes too long to unfold. The couple move to a small town to try and start over. The wife is too broken to go along and begins an affair with a local womanizer. It's all about sex and forgetting what happened, but there's not enough substance to get the viewer caught up in the emotional goings on. Everything is predictable and thinly plotted. Kim Yun-jin (from Lost) gives a decent performance but the direction of the film is very weak.

Most people will be watching this for Yun-jin Kim, who, like all the other actors in the film do an amazing job, but doesn't have much to do. Beyond that however, we have a well paced drama about two broken emotionally disaffected adults who find themselves searching for something with each other instead of themselves.Beyond that, there isn't much of a plot, but this type of movie doesn't need an extremely complicated plot as it is purely about the relationships between characters and the results in their actions.It may be difficult for most viewers to relate to any of the characters on screen, but it still doesn't detract from the quality of production, direction, script or acting. If anything it is a well made film, and like most movies it really is up to the viewer to take a chance and open themselves up to the experience the film provides.