Unmarried Soo-ock leaves Seoul to teach at an elementary school in a remote village. She gradually realizes that a local vagabond, Kkaechol, is engaging in all manner of sexual acts with the village’s women?something the men in the village are completely aware of. Im deals exceptionally with sexuality and desire in this film, which combines the latent anonymity of a rural community, not of the urban space, with the thorny and complex matter of lust. The rural landscape is framed as a reservoir of suppressed desire, and the villagers turn out to be filthy conspirators, making this film one of Im’s most modern.