By John Corrado
Eight years ago, Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong made Burning, a masterful slow-burn thriller. Now, in Possible Love, Lee’s belated follow up to that 2018 film, the director crafts a complex character drama focused on the entanglements between two married couples.
Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) and Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) are a working class couple facing the fallout from Ho-seok being laid off from his factory job. They encounter a wealthy couple, businessman Sang-woo (Zo In-sung) and his wife Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong). Ye-ji is a documentary filmmaker, with her latest project documenting disenfranchised factory workers.
Ye-ji is the wealthy sort who has sympathy for the working class, interviewing the proletariat while wearing her designer clothes and carrying an expensive handbag. Sang-woo speaks very differently in private about her subjects. But Mi-ok becomes increasingly enamoured with her, drawing all of their worlds together.
There will be comparisons to Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite in the exploration of class differences, but Possible Love is very much its own thing. Mixing themes about marital tensions, documentary filmmaking, and labour rights, Lee’s film is doing a lot, and takes its time at 165 minutes. But once the film starts to reveal itself, it’s very absorbing.
Lee lets his film unfold like a novel, slowly turning the screw, until it all comes to a head in an incredible final act. It’s a meticulous, carefully plotted film, showing us scenes and then revealing the full meaning of them later on. It’s carried by excellent performances from all four leads, each adding layers to their characters to make them feel three-dimensional.
Film Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)
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