If I were to summarize this movie in a few words, this would be it: Serendipity with plenty of sex.

Telling a story of two strangers who meet by chance in an elevator, The Intimate follows their journey through the day and night (which doesn't seem to end by the way),as they discover about each other, and about themselves in the process. Kinda like Before Sunrise in its treatment, the lovers, nameless except known as Boy (Jo Dong-Hyuk) and Girl (Sung Hyun- Ah),play the usual courtship mind games, playing coy, being aggressive, taking turns to bust each others chops as they fall into each other's arms.

Sounds like your typical romance movie, no? At certain points the usual elements are there, like plot devices romanticizing a bench and hand drawn pictures, and the mushy things lovers whisper to the ears of another. Clichéd highlights include one needing to leave the country the next day, and the other being engaged to someone else, and now both of them, by Fate, are presented a chance to do something totally different. But in this story, it managed to take aged old questions of doubt, and weave a compelling movie around them.

The basic question will be what is love. Is it supposed to be long drawn and lasting a lifetime, or is the feeling actually made up of short passionate bursts? And after being with someone for so long, is it a question of being afraid to leave the comfort zone of familiarity, or does it boil down truly to faithfulness? The nagging fear of being about to marry someone, and then you meet your soulmate - what do you do? Blame the person for turning up in your life too late? And it is somehow true that the longer you know someone, the more faults that you will find, and the question is, will you be able to live with those faults, or do you prefer to live in that constant crest of emotional highs and bailing out when the slightest inclination of such faults start to rear its head?

It helps that both leads are eye-candy, as they offer you a chance to answer some of those questions yourself if you were to put yourselves in their shoes and be offered the same set of temptations - here's what you currently have, and here's what someone else can offer. What would you do? If there is a gripe, it'll be the one-dimensional fiancé that somehow has to be demonized in order to make the other option all the more appealing.

It's a relatively engaging movie, though watching the out takes while the end credits rolled made you appreciate the movie's direction a little more. While those scenes which were left out may be seen as more interesting, somehow I felt it would have disrupted the pace and dragged events rather than having it all compacted into a screen duration of 24 hours. It would have been a totally different look and feel altogether, but probably not for the better.

The theme of this movie has been repeated a number of times. Two people encounter each other and get involved so intensely that their lives undergo an upheaval from what their lives once were. Personally, I loved the film but then I am almost 70 years old and trying to relive my youth. One thing for certain, the Korean actress Hyeon-a-Seong is absolutely incredible in this movie. She is one of the most beautiful and sexiest women I have seen, live or on film. By the way, she can also act. I was mesmerized listening to her voice in Korean matched with English subtitles. Her accompanying gestures and facial expressions were "haunting" to say the least. I've got to do a search on all her movies and get the DVDs. Her male co-star was no slouch either, if you ladies are interested.

This grown up movie about a woman about to get married and spends a day hooking up with a stranger is rather weak.. They hook up then fight then hook up again. But in the end what was the point of it all? It felt shallow. No real insights here. There are other Korean movies about grown up relationships that are better. The characters aren't interesting. Don't bother.