Movie Review
Possible Love
8/10
TLDR
Lee Chang-dong’s first film in eight years is an engrossing, affecting look at commitment in all its forms. Jeon Do-yeon and Sul Kyung-gu are superb, and nearly three hours never drag. Give it your full attention, and these messy, frustrating characters reveal something deeply human.
Where to watch: In select theaters October 23, streaming on Netflix November 6
The Facts
Synopsis: A funeral pulls Mi-ok, her laid-off husband Ho-seok and their young son into the orbit of a documentary filmmaker and her wealthy husband, and as Mi-ok lets the camera in, she finds herself drawn to a man she can’t read.
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Stars: Jeon Do-yeon, Sul Kyung-gu, Zo In-sung, Cho Yeo-jeong
Rated: R for language, some sexuality and nudity
Running Length: 164 minutes
The Thoughts
In early August, I was laid off from the job I’d held for 19 years. I’m telling you that up front because there’s no separating it from how Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love hit me. Nearly three hours of two marriages, one documentary camera and a man who no longer knows who he is without his job doesn’t sound like an easy sell. Stick with it, though, because it’s an engrossing and affecting look at commitment in all its forms: to the people we love, to the roles we’ve taken on, and to finding our footing when someone changes the game without asking us.
Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love Opens With a Commandment
The film opens on a single line, “Thou shalt not covet,” and that’s no accident. It grew out of producer Maciej Musiał’s project to remake all ten episodes of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog as features, though Lee is quick to say it isn’t an adaptation and tells a completely different story. It’s his first film in eight years, since Burning, which became the first Korean film to make the Oscar shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film. Possible Love is South Korea’s submission this year, the fourth time a Lee film has been picked, and it arrives with the Grand Jury Prize from Venice in hand.
Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu, Peppermint Candy) was a respected welder until a strike at his plant ended in a brutal police raid, the loss of several friends and pink slips for everyone who survived it. Two years later, he and his fellow castoffs call themselves “the dead” and the coworkers who kept their jobs “the living.” His wife, Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon, Secret Sunshine), works at a mask factory and keeps the household running around his silences and his drinking.
At a coworker’s funeral, they cross paths with Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong, Parasite), an ambitious documentary filmmaker chronicling laid-off workers, and her wealthy husband, Sang-woo (Zo In-sung, Escape from Mogadishu). Ye-ji wants this family for her next film, and once Mi-ok agrees to be filmed, she finds herself uneasily drawn to the unreadable Sang-woo. Lee knows exactly what he has in his leads, too. Sul starred in Peppermint Candy and Oasis, Jeon won Best Actress at Cannes for Secret Sunshine, and the two have now shared the screen four times, going back to 2001’s I Wish I Had a Wife.
When Your Job Becomes Your Name
Here’s the part that got under my skin. When you spend nearly two decades somewhere, your identity gets completely interlaced with the company you work for. It’s how you introduce yourself, how you fill your calendar and, if you’re lucky, where you find your people. Then one day it’s gone, and you learn the hard way that some of the colleagues you thought were your lifelong support system vanish the moment you’re no longer on the payroll. Nobody warns you about that part.
Lee understands that grief in his bones. Ho-seok doesn’t just lose a paycheck, he loses his place in the world, and those “dead” and “living” labels say everything about how much of him stayed behind on that factory floor. So many of us over-identify with our work, and the film treats both that and the cold shrug of corporate detachment with real nuance. There are no villains twirling mustaches in a boardroom, just a family trying to figure out who they are once the thing that defined them is gone.
Cracks on the Surface, Fractures Underneath
Sul plays Ho-seok as a man who is slow to show his feelings, and the film follows his lead, so it rewards your patience. Alongside a luminous Jeon, he gives the film its backbone and its heartache, two working-class people holding a marriage together with tape and stubbornness. Watching from the edges is their 10-year-old son, Cheol (Jung Seol), who has few lines but is always observing, a reminder that kids are always listening to adult conversations, whatever their parents think. A lot goes unsaid in Cheol’s house, and that makes the knot so much harder to untangle when it finally has to be addressed.
Cho and Zo make an equally fascinating pair. Ye-ji seems to have everything, which makes her a source of curiosity for Mi-ok more than envy, and the two women become fast friends for very different reasons. Ye-ji wants to shape her documentary around this family almost as atonement for her privilege, while Sang-woo can’t quite figure out why his wife is spending so much time with them. The longer the film goes on, the more you see that the couple with cracks on the surface is sturdier at its bedrock, while the one with the porcelain veneer is fractured underneath.
If that setup sounds a little like Parasite, you’re not wrong. Cho played the wealthy mother in Bong Joon Ho’s Best Picture winner, composer Jung Jae-il scored both films, and once again a working family gets an up-close look at how the other half lives. Lee just has no interest in thriller mechanics. Where Bong builds to an explosion, Lee lets the pressure build in glances, long silences and the small humiliations of being someone else’s subject.
Nearly Three Hours That Never Drag
This is a film that requires your full attention, so take advantage of its theatrical run if you can find a theater near you showing it. Netflix giving audiences that chance matters for a movie that’s a harder sell amid the distractions of home and family. That’s not to say it’s boring or hard to warm to, just that you have to commit to a story that is slow to show its feelings, much like Ho-seok.
Kim Ji-yong (Decision to Leave) shoots with an observant eye, letting scenes play out so you notice who’s watching whom, which matters in a story built around a camera. Jung’s music is gorgeous, opening up the characters without telling you how to feel. And credit goes to editor Kim Da-won, who also cut Burning, for keeping things moving so well that, even at 164 minutes, Lee’s longest film yet, it never feels as long as it is.
The Possibility of a Better Tomorrow
Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love is equally a story about masculinity, fidelity, friendship, love and the constant hope for a better tomorrow. It’s a small, intimate film that asks you to sit still and huddle close. Give it that time, and these characters start revealing themselves in ways that are messy, complicated, frustrating and deeply human. Coming off the year I’ve had, that hit closer to home than I expected. By the end, you may not agree with every choice they make, but you understand why making it felt necessary.
The Final
Possible Love asks you to sit still and huddle close, and it rewards you for it. You may not agree with every choice these characters make, but by the end, you understand why making it felt necessary.
8/10
Where to watch: In select theaters October 23, streaming on Netflix November 6
Reviewed by Joe Botten
Joe Botten is The MN Movie Man, a Twin Cities film critic writing spoiler-free reviews since 2012. He also writes for Loud and Clear Reviews, a Rotten Tomatoes approved site. Find him on Instagram and Letterboxd.
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