Possible Love
Cast: Jeon Do-yeon, Sul Kyung-gu, Zo In-sung, Cho Yeo-jeong
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Language: Korean
Where to watch: Netflix
Star rating: ★★★★★
There are films which are easy to describe and even easier to write about. Perhaps due to their unidimensional nature and the way it all comes together for the viewer. Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love is not one of those films. The South Korean writer and director is back after eight years with a new film, after 2018’s mysterious and haunting Burning. Almost novelistic in its depth and brimming with rich details, it takes some time to settle in, but once it does, the film casts a hypnotic spell. There’s an almost transcendental quality in the way it examines life in all its contradictions and surprises. The kind that cannot be explained.
The premise
In broad strokes, it is a film about two married couples getting to know each other. They are from starkly different economic backgrounds and become acquainted while filming a documentary in the aftermath of a massive corporate labour layoff. On one side are the laid-off worker and his spouse, who open their lives and rooms (and hearts) to a documentary filmmaker and her spouse. Beneath this, it is also a film about the very act of filmmaking, the ethics of documenting, and the unspeakable friction of class and desire.
Jeon Do-yeon plays the sweet and lively Mi-ok, a wife and mother who has not lost the spark for life even though her husband, Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu), has been fired from work and hides behind sad eyes and a few words. Their young son, Jung Seop, is observant yet quiet. The film opens with Mi-ok worrying about how she looks as she arrives at a funeral. There, she meets Sang-woo (Zo In-sung), a handsome and kind stranger who will move his car so she can find her wedding ring, which slipped from her finger.
She also greets Sang-woo’s wife, Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-Jong), who is a documentary filmmaker. It does not take much time for an agreement to be reached, because by the next time the two women meet, Mi-ok is already sharing details about the layoff, her husband, and her childhood in front of the camera. It has been ascertained that Mi-ok and Ho-seok are the subjects of a new project on the effects of corporate layoffs. As Possible Love progresses, the lives of these two families become interconnected, and the dynamics change with delicate urgency.
A film about class
Possible Love, which the director co-wrote with Oh Jung-mi, is a film about that indecipherable sting of power and the lack of it. It is a film about the shadow lines of class and privilege that shape how people live and communicate. One does not talk about these little elements, but they are always noticing, thinking, and calculating. Even though Mi-ok and Ye-ji promise to become friends, they are two different people with different ways of life. The way Mi-ok dresses and holds the big wine glass on the table stands out in contrast to the rest, and she is the one who notices the expensive bag Ye-ji carries.
Lee explores these deeply human wants and desires against the backdrop of the devastating layoffs. The smaller details are assimilated with masterful attention, where not a single frame feels out of place, given that Lee will break the wall for a series of rewarding payoffs. Even though time moves at a unidimensional pace in Possible Love, Lee inserts flashbacks that inform the narrative in wistful, heartbreaking ways.
Final thoughts
With so many underlying character threads and wordless sexual charge rapidly pushing forward, it is astonishing how tightly Lee maintains a grasp over the narrative. Long scenes play out in a slippery matrix of desire and friction, expertly shot by Kim Ji-yong and edited by Kim Da-won. The film’s silent character in question is Ho-seok, who refuses to seek group therapy and would not come in front of the camera for an interview. But when Lee tightens the grip and the wall breaks, it is a moment of hair-raising anguish. It is the film’s most arresting image. Kyung-gu, who has frequently worked with Lee, is magnificent in the part. Cho Yeo-jeong and Zo In-sung are very effective, too, managing to create that flippant ease of privilege.
However, Possible Love breathes and expands into a beast of its own because of the presence of Jeon Do-yeon as Mi-ok. Teaming with Lee after Secret Sunshine, Jeon is the heart and soul of this film, with her ravishing portrait of a woman who is somehow intoxicated by the pleasures life still has to offer, despite the surrounding gloom. A particularly moving sequence rests on Jeon’s face as she recollects her younger days, intently observing the moon, and a sea of emotions washes over her.
Possible Love extends a lot of kindness to Mi-ok and her bravery, and shows that the camera might come too close to objectively capture her sorrow, but it can never capture her heart’s silent resilience. To live and love like her is a secret, her way of dissent. Possible Love is a film to savour and hold close from one of our greatest living directors. Like the best of films, it lets us find new ways to see the world in all its unfathomable beauty.
