I was amazed that they made this in 1999 (ie, 25 years ago), when Korea is still so homophobic to this day. Not only that, but it was made for TV, and not a feature film. TV is always more conservative because it serves a general audience while theaters restrict the audience based on age. This makes it all the more stunning -- and impressive -- that "Sad Temptation" aired on Korean TV a quarter of a century ago.

Given all this, I did not expect to see any physical contact between the leads, and was duly pleased with the one, small kiss that they did include. But what really makes the movie special is how it conveyed the men's love without physical, sexual expressions and, instead, used dialogue, eye contact, and subtle gestures to do the trick. The subway scene, for example, was so powerful that it did not even require dialogue, let alone physical touch, to portray that these men were in love.

These two men did not need to say one word out loud because they had a silent understanding that they were going to miss their stops and ride the subway to the end of the line to go to the beach. The ability to share a silent understanding with someone is a powerful testament of true love. It requires top notch acting to convey such love without any dialogue or physical contact, and these two actors were absolutely up to the task, thereby giving us splendid performances.

Now, I must confess that the leads' age difference gave me pause in my first viewing. These guys are over 30 years apart. The young one is about 25 and the older one is about 55. To me, the age disparity would've presented a bigger conflict than being the same gender. There are cultural issues when people are from different generations as these 2 men are. Then, of course, there is the issue of physical attraction (ie, people lose sexual desirability as they age).

But when I watched the movie a 2nd time, I came to the conclusion that the older man had such depth in his character that a hot-as-hell young guy could genuinely be attracted to his character, if not his looks. Moreover, the young one says he is attracted to the older one's vulnerability, and this is believable because the actor playing the older one truly does convey vulnerability. In short, it was the excellence of the actors that made this movie work.

After all, the plot is not altogether original, as we've all seen variations on the basic plot where a middle-aged person bored with their marriage falls in love with a younger person, thus rekindling their emotional life. It's the sort of plot we've seen hundreds of times before, and can see hundreds more -- if, that is, the actors imbue the role with the sort of authenticity that the actors in "Sad Temptation" did. The performances were deeply effective, causing me to not only care about the characters while I watched, but to continue thinking about them long after the movie credits rolled. In short, it's a movie with deep emotional resonance.

One reason for that resonance is that it's not strictly about homosexual love, but about all human love. It asks the viewer to examine the essence of love itself, and confronts us with the fact that love is not some fluffy, feel good extra in life but, rather, the very sustenance of life -- without which we cannot survive. This theme is expressed with a piece of dialogue in the climactic scene where the younger lead asks his beloved, "If a person can't love someone else, then how can they live in this difficult world?"

This is the sort of dialogue that could easily come off as a glib one liner in a movie where the characters have not earned the audience's respect. The beauty of "Sad Temptation" is that by time this dialogue arrives, the audience is not only emotionally invested in the characters, but takes the characters seriously on an intellectual level as well.

Highly recommended.