The newest film from South Korean master Lee Chang-dong is just waiting to detonate. Instead, the plot of “Possible Love” simmers as a documentary project brings two families on different ends of a violent workers’ strike suppression together.
Director Lee’s films always have a slow burn (his most recent feature from 2018 was named “Burning,” after all), building up to a moment of devastation or actualization for his protagonists. With his newest cinematic work, which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and played at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, the devastation all comes from the past as the characters struggle to reckon with it in the present and strain to find a bright future.
Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong) is a first-time documentarian seeking to document the decline of labor in South Korea, pitching her project to a grant board. But aside from government funding, Ye-ji receives support from her wealthy husband, Sang-woo (Zo In-sung), who spends most of the film’s runtime on his phone, buying and flipping companies for millions of dollars.
The novice filmmaker finds Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu), a former SP Heavy Industries worker, and his wife, Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon). Ye-ji has noble intentions but increasingly starts to view this family as fascinating documentary subjects and nothing more.
There’s a shot in “Possible Love” where Mi-ok and Ho-seok’s 10-year-old son Cheol (Jung Seol) sits in a coat closet out of shyness, and the audience is treated to his POV, where the cameraman and camera look like Freddy Krueger haunting this child.
But the reason Ye-ji remains insistent is that Mi-ok and Ho-seok have a genuinely harrowing tale, which plays to Lee’s larger interests in how one lives in a capitalist society that views the very idea of labor rights as something that needs to be destroyed.
Whereas Mi-ok immediately seems happy to talk to Ye-ji and become friends with her to learn about her wealthy lifestyle, Ho-seok remains shut off and refuses to talk for most of the film. The few flashback sequences all come from Mi-ok’s perspective, except for the last one where Ho-seok is a victim of labor suppression.
Both Sul Kyung-gu and Jeon Do-yeon are returning actors for Lee, as the two were the respective stars of 1999’s “Peppermint Candy” and 2007’s “Secret Sunshine.” Jeon’s performance as Mi-ok blends earnest class solidarity and a perverse desire to understand the lives of the rich and powerful. Meanwhile, Sul plays Ho-seok as a hollowed-out shell. The character internalizes his painful past and has very little trust in anybody following a traumatic experience.
The duo’s performances reveal how solidarity and hope can become disconnected in a world that dispels notions of workers’ rights. “Possible Love” now joins an esteemed collection of films that not only was South Korea’s pick for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards, but also specifically focuses on the country’s income inequality.
What separates “Possible Love” from Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 Best Picture winner “Parasite” and Park Chan-wook’s 2025 thriller “No Other Choice” is Lee’s writer background. He penned multiple novels a decade before he made his first film, “Green Fish” in 1997. Lee, as a director who is also a writer, always layers his characters with conflicts inside of them that are never easy to parse out.
Whereas “Parasite” and “No Other Choice” feature protagonists that are one-note so their respective directors can use their filmmaking to display larger points, “Possible Love” lets the audience sit with webs of contradictions and feelings, giving the actors an entire canvas to create these characters in whatever way they choose.
While much of the film remains dour about long-term labor rights in the country, the moon is a recurring topic, which, to the characters, represents hope. Mi-ok says at one point, “If we try our best, better days will come.” And although Lee never gives an actual reason for hope, “Possible Love” very pointedly considers the possibility.
“Possible Love” is now playing at The Little, more info and showtimes here.
Henry O’Brien is a writer and critic based in New York City. You can find his work in CITY and “Film Obsessive.”
