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This film, the debut feature by director Lee Jae-Yong, is a muted, introspective view of the feelings surrounding an affair. It features Lee Mi-Sook and Lee Jung-Jae as two people who find in each other's presence a sense of meaning and consolation. In early 1999, An Affair won an award for best Asian film at the Newport Beach International Film Festival in Los Angeles.

Seo-Hyun, who lives in Seoul with her husband and son, first meets her sister's fiancee in order to help the couple find a new apartment. Her sister is held up in America, and so the two new acquaintances start to arrange the details of the wedding together. As time passes they find themselves drawn to each other, and eventually start having an affair.

Lee Jae-Yong creates a rather distinctive mood in this film, through his use of plastered, gallery-like interiors and a careful selection of music. In addition, he draws forth a remarkable performance from lead actress Lee Mi-Sook, who expresses beautifully the complexities of her character.

For me the film captures most vividly the silent anguish of the wife before the affair. In witnessing the clumsy, unthinking attitude of her husband, and the extent to which her own feelings have become lost inside her, we realize that the affair is Seo-Hyun's only means of regaining her self. As we watch the relationship develop, we are struck more by the desperation with which the two are pulled together, rather than any feelings of intimacy they share.

Nonetheless, as the two lovers begin to find solace in each other, their old loneliness gradually transforms into feelings of desperation and guilt. The director skillfully augments the level of tension as the sister returns from America and both she and Seo-Hyun's husband begin to suspect that something is wrong.

Probably the darkest, loneliest feature of the year, An Affair draws us into the pain of another's life and challenges us to imagine ourselves in the same situation.      (Darcy Paquet)

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