The film, like so many others in this genre, is based on a novel. The South Korean Novel was written in 1996 by Jung-Il Chang and it was immediately banned after publication. The author even ended up spending several months in prison because of it.

The story revolves around the sexual and sadomasochistic relationship between an 18 year old high-school student, Y, and a 38 year-old sculptor, J. The relationship begins when Y calls J because her friend is to shy to do it herself. Y finds J's voice on the phone so sexually appealing that she decides to take the train to go visit him and lose her virginity to him – she doesn’t want to lose it by getting raped like her two sisters.

The relationship begins as a regular sexual one, but by the second or third encounter J begins spanking her, which leads to more violent and harder floggings using various items. These leave large marks and scars on Y, but she doesn’t mind because it makes J happy. After a while J turns the roles around and tells Y to flog him. She hesitates at first but soon she has become the dominant partner and has him begging for it at every meeting.

The movie is filmed primarily with a hand held camera and sometimes takes liberties with the 'fourth wall'. Sun-Woo Jang did interviews with the actors and there are moments interspersed throughout the film where the scene will cut to one of the actors talking about the movie or the role they are portraying and their character. In one scene as Y and her friend get into a violent fight the director yells cut at the end and the camera moves to reveal a sound guy and some crew. There were also times where I could hear the whirr of the camera motor during a scene. While I have read some negative reactions to the haphazard style, I personally really enjoyed it and found that it made the film that much more interesting to watch.

Lies is a film that I found at my local video store on the same shelf with all the b-movie erotica films; however it is a better film than most of those and one that I enjoyed beyond the genre.