Director Lee Chang-dong returns with another measured, beautifully nuanced low-key drama that observes the status quo of South Korea today.
Love, possibly: Jeon Do-yeon and Zo In-sung
Photo courtesy of Netflix.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
It’s extraordinary to think about it, but Lee Chang-dong’s Burning was the first Korean film to be submitted for an Oscar in the best foreign language film category – in 2018. It failed to be even nominated, but the following year the South Korean Parasite won the gong for best picture, along with six Oscar nominations. In fact, Parasite was the first non-English-language film ever to win the top prize. This year Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love is being touted as a serious contender for a nomination for best international feature, following its Grand Jury Prize win at Venice this year.
Were it not for the festival circuit, serious contemplations of the human condition like Possible Love would never see the light of day. The latter film is helped by the presence of Cho Yeo-jeong, who played the stay-at-home matriarch in Parasite, and here portrays Lee Ye-ji, a documentary filmmaker recording the fate of the invisible labour force behind every successful business. Inspired by the idea on a visit to Qatar, she sets about fulfilling her ambition back in South Korea following a massive layoff at a local factory. By chance, she encounters a welder’s wife, Ahn Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon), who, after minor reservations, turns out to be a natural in front of the camera. The latter’s husband Choi Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) is a less accessible figure, still nurturing emotional and physical wounds from his clash with police following a protest two years previously. Nonetheless, won over by the affable charm of Lee Ye-ji’s moneyed husband Han Sang-woo (Zo In-sung), the welder is drawn into the web being spun by Ye-ji.
While the political themes of workers’ rights and labour solidarity are a little over-egged, it is the interaction of the four leading characters that is the film’s ace card. As Mi-ok opens up like an over-irrigated ghost orchid, her husband battles interior demons and seems to be on the cusp of a nervous breakdown. Meanwhile, blithely sporting wildly inappropriate designer outfits, Ye-ji pitches her camera into battle, the subject of her film taking on a far more personal flavour, but where there’s a story... And then there’s Sang-woo, a natural flirt, involved in some fantastic deal he’s conducting in the US. How all these disparate elements will come into play provides the dramatic tension of Lee Chang-dong’s drama, where every detail is meticulously placed. Meanwhile, Choi Ho-seok and Mi-ok’s painfully shy but ever-so-polite ten-year-old son, acts as a ghostly observer, appearing in doorways at inopportune moments, trying to understand why his parents are acting so oddly. He provides the clearest vision of what his parents are unable to see, standing in for the spectator in the cinema. For a film that runs for 166 minutes, Possible Love does not overstay its welcome and seeps into one’s psyche long after the closing curtain.
Cast: Jeon Do-yeon, Sul Kyung-gu, Zo In-sung, Cho Yeo-jeong, Kang Chang-gwon, Jung Seop.
Dir Lee Chang-dong, Pro Lee Joon-dong, David Levine and Chadwick Prichard, Screenplay Lee Chang-dong and Oh Jung-mi, Ph Kim Ji-yong, Pro Des Jang Min-woo, Ed Kim Da-won, Music Jung Jae-il, Costumes Choong-yeon Lee, Sound Han Myung-hwan and Lee Seung-cheol.
Pinehouse Film/Anonymous Content/Nowfilm-Netflix.
166 mins. South Korea. 2026. UK and US Rel: 23 October 2026. Cert. 15.
