The film "Lovers in the Time of Sadness" is filled with exaggerated colors and a sense of melancholy. The location where the story takes place is possibly the dirtiest and most sordid place I've seen in all Korean films, yet it still conceals a pair of people who rush towards each other like moths to a flame.
In an isolated village, there is a dilapidated two-story building. The aged and decayed floor is dotted with small holes, which become peepholes. The spirited young boy living upstairs sees a beautiful but lonely woman living downstairs. Her husband, a security guard, is often absent day and night, and when he returns, he treats her merely as a tool for sexual release. The boy secretly falls in love with this desolate woman.
A strange plot point is that the woman never has direct contact with her husband during their sexual encounters. This leads to the boy, who eventually obtains the key to the downstairs door, becoming unable to resist and imitating the man's actions, thus having a relationship with the woman. When the secret is exposed, the woman is finally moved by the boy's innocence and sincerity, and their love ignites like a flame between them.