‘Possible Love’ Review: Korean Master Lee Chang-dong’s Transfixing Meditation on Economic and Emotional Unease Is a Quiet Powerhouse

In his exquisitely layered seventh feature, Possible Love (Ga-neung-han sa-rang), Lee Chang-dong’s humanistic observational skills remain at their peak, the acuity of his insights into emotional lives and social conditions unparalleled. More straightforward though no less affecting than the haunting ambiguities of his last film, Burning, the Korean director’s melancholic new work turns his customary slow-burn approach to the simmering tensions between two couples from different economic strata. A profound meditation on trauma, loss of dignity, yearning and class envy, this is a sad but beautiful chamber piece, fleshed out by a superlative ensemble.

The project was announced as part of a series of reinterpretations by international directors of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s landmark Dekalog, which was made for Polish television and inspired by the Ten Commandments. Unlike Asghar Farhadi’s Cannes lowlight, Parallel Tales, Lee’s film is a complete narrative departure from that source. It shares little beyond the commandment at the heart of Kieslowski’s tenth chapter, “Thou shalt not covet,” and a rejection of the moral imperative that religious framework might imply. 

Following its premiere run at the Venice, Toronto and New York film festivals, Possible Love — recently chosen as Korea’s submission in the international Oscar category — will open Oct. 23 in limited theatrical release before streaming on Netflix from Nov. 6.

The story concerns a blue-collar couple, Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) and his wife Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon), still struggling to bounce back from the loss of his factory job two years earlier after a brutal government crackdown on striking employees. When they arrive at the funeral of his former work colleague, taciturn Ho-seok refuses to enter the building, sending his wife and their withdrawn 10-year-old son Cheol (Jung Seol) in alone while he waits in the car. 

Unlike her brooding, clearly depressed husband, who refused counseling after his job loss, Mi-ok is cheerful and easygoing. She strikes up a rapport with Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), a documentary filmmaker interviewing attendees at the reception for a project about workforce shrinkage as AI and corporate restructuring eliminate jobs. When Ho-seok does finally come inside, he turns belligerent with Mi-ok, making a scene as she reminds him of his promise to restrict his drinking to when he’s at home.

After Mi-ok’s recent weight loss, her wedding ring has become loose. When it slips off and rolls under a car in the parking lot outside, handsome stranger Sang-woo (Zo In-sung) helps her find it using the headlights of his Porsche. He is soon revealed to be Ye-ji’s husband, a wealthy businessman who exudes the breezy confidence that usually comes with money and privilege.

Lee and his Burning co-writer Oh Jung-mi resist what might have been the first instinct of many filmmakers by refusing to make Ye-ji and Sang-woo overly patronizing rich jerks. Both characters are more nuanced, even if there are inherent ethical questions raised by a well-heeled documentarian choosing to make a film about vanishing labor. It’s telling that after being granted permission to film Mi-ok at her job in a small paper manufacturing plant, Ye-ji decides that the work is too simple and repetitive to be of interest, instead preferring to focus on her subjects’ personal histories.

In an amusing throwaway moment, Mi-ok furtively photographs Ye-ji’s stylish handbag and prices it online, later commenting that the filmmaker’s chic, expensive outfits are perhaps not an ideal choice when she’s trying to blend in and talk to disenfranchised union workers. Glancing observations also suggest Ye-ji acting out of self-interest when she makes sure her cameraman is catching every uncomfortable revelation.

But all that is possibly unconscious behavior. Ye-ji’s overtures of friendship to uneducated Mi-ok seem genuine, as does Sang-woo’s generosity when he insists on taking the family out to a Korean barbecue joint for dinner, where the wives get drunk and messy on soju. Later, Sang-woo agrees to Ye-ji’s wish to invite them to their swanky coastal vacation home with its own private beach, only half joking when he calls his wife’s displays of empathy “method acting.” 

The documentarian obviously knows that the meatiest stuff will come from interviewing Ho-soek, and since her request of Mi-ok to nudge her husband to participate has yielded nothing, it’s not hard to discern an ulterior motive in her idea of a cozy weekend together. But sexual tensions, increasingly unignorable class distances and a shattering full-scale anxiety attack on camera cast a pall over the getaway.

Leaning into his literary roots as a fiction writer, Lee makes eloquent use of flashbacks to color in the details of Ho-seok and Mi-ok’s history, from the sweet awkwardness of their first encounter as teenagers to his romantic refusal to accept her decision years later to end their relationship. Lee’s storytelling is so unfalteringly naturalistic — free of sentiment or melodrama — that even a potentially hokey scene in which Ho-seok, in military-service uniform, goes full Officer and a Gentleman, sweeping in to “rescue” Mi-ok from the Seoul sweatshop where she worked as a young woman, has integrity.

There are also lovely depictions of the optimism, solidarity and hope of the early days of the strike at Ho-seok’s workplace, when the presence of wives and children on the labor-dispute frontlines fostered a real sense of community, not to mention the rare feeling for some of the women of being on equal footing with their husbands. 

The novelistic feel of those interludes makes the late swerve into unflinching docudrama hit even harder when we get a full account of the violence that ended the strike. 

Reuniting with Lee after Peppermint Candy and Oasis, Sul is devastating as the sad-eyed Ho-seok, whose closed-off nature initially seems like the sorrow of so many ordinary men whose identities are inextricably linked to their roles as workers and breadwinners. The pain of his inability to speak about the tangle of anger and shame gnawing at him is palpable. But it cuts even deeper when we witness the brutality visited upon this man who has spent a lifetime priding himself on his masculine physicality, eventually releasing his bottled-up trauma in a raw howl of anguish.

The wonderful Jeon — unforgettable in the role that earned her the best actress award at Cannes in Lee’s transcendent grief drama, Secret Sunshine — is equally moving as Mi-ok. She happily chatters away, desperately trying to keep it together while her husband crumbles, never fully masking the wave of sadness that has flattened their lives. There’s something ineffably touching about the effect on Mi-ok of being around the wealthy couple. Perhaps it’s covetousness, but it seems a more innocent fascination, even in the sexual tension of her time alone with Sang-woo.

Young actor Jung is also terrific, as a boy who perhaps understands more than his parents give him credit for, something hinted at in a closing reveal.

In a variation on her character from Parasite, Cho deftly underplays Yi-je’s insensitivity as another woman projecting a blithe lack of awareness of her privilege. Similarly, Zo — seen recently as the monster hunter in Na Hong-jin’s delirious sci-fi action epic, Hope — stays for most of the running time just the right side of smug entitlement.

As always with Lee, the movie is impeccably crafted. Cinematographer Kim Ji-yong’s camera never intrudes, lending grace and honesty to the character studies, while Jung Jae-il’s ravishing piano and string score heightens the emotions without becoming manipulative.

In its scenes of factories, union gatherings and ex-employee counseling groups, Possible Love at times seems to sit somewhere near the process-based approaches of, say, Laurent Cantet or Frederick Wiseman, while its unhurried build from low-key conversation-as-action into more emotionally charged territory reminded me of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s recent All of a Sudden. But comparisons aside, this is unmistakably a Lee Chang-dong film, its aching humanism reflecting the co-existence of despair and hope.