Lee Chang-dong’s delicate yet sturdy drama Possible Love—premiering here at the Venice Film Festival, hitting theaters Oct. 23 and streaming on Netflix Nov. 6—is a movie about figuring out how to function in the world.
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drama → premier → world
If that description seems confoundingly vague, Lee’s movie is not.
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movie → seem → ?
It shows us a world where people feel lost after losing their livelihood, where individuals strive to connect with others despite differences of class and temperament, where tenderness ultimately has more power than arrogance.
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tenderness → show → arrogance
It’s a movie with a gentle, generous spirit.
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It → ’ → spirit
Lee opens the picture with a funeral, or, rather, a small family piling into their car to get to the funeral venue.
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Lee → open → venue
Wife and mother Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) wonders if she’s wearing the right dress, and the shoes she has chosen, a pair she hasn’t worn in a long time, are already pinching her feet.
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she → wonder → feet
Her husband, Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu), says little—so little that it’s clear he’s filled with dread over whatever awaits him at this upcoming, obviously unhappy social event.
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whatever → say → event
Their extremely quiet young son (Jung Seop) sits in the back seat, amusing himself by dangling an empty chip bag out the window like a windsock.
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son → sit → windsock
“It’s flying,” he says, just before letting it go—he’s not the only one feeling the oppressiveness of that car ride.
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he → fly → ride
It’s never expressly spelled out who this funeral is for, but we can intuit that it’s one of Ho-seok’s former work colleagues.
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it → spell → colleagues
It turns out that Ho-seok is one of many workers who not so long ago lost his job at a large corporation, SP, and he hasn’t yet recovered, either financially or emotionally.
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he → turn → corporation
Mi-ok is doing the best she can—she holds down a menial factory job—but her husband’s depression and excessive drinking is getting to her.
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depression → do → her
By chance, in the funeral home parking lot, she meets a handsome stranger, Sang-woo (Zo In-sung), who moves his very expensive car when Mi-ok believes her wedding ring, having slipped off her finger, has rolled beneath it.
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ring → meet → it
It turns out that Sang-woo’s wife, Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-Jong), is making a documentary about, as she puts it, “the personal lives of laborers.”
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she → turn → laborers
Ye-ji is thrilled to have found Mi-ok and Ho-seok as subjects—she’s particularly interested in the melancholic Ho-seok, who, she believes, could be the dramatic key her project.
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she → thrill → seok
But she and Mi-ok also genuinely like each other and strike up a friendship.
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she → like → friendship
Possible Love traces the tangled dynamics between these four characters, while also flirting with uncomfortable questions about the moral quandaries that can arise in any filmmaker-subject relationship.
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that → trace → relationship
Mostly, though, Possible Love traces the ways people come to care for one another, either platonically or romantically.
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people → trace → one
Ye-ji and Mi-ok quickly come to think of themselves as sisters.
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ji → come → sisters
Though Ye-ji has married well, she doesn’t come from a privileged family—her father ran a dry-cleaning establishment—and she has some sense of Mi-ok’s money worries and feelings of insecurity.
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she → marry → insecurity
At an early meeting, where Ye-ji outlines the aim of her proposed documentary to Mi-ok, she leaves the table momentarily, and Mi-ok snaps a picture of the elegant backpack she’s left behind.
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she → outline → backpack
Then she uses a Google-image search to find out the brand.
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she → use → brand
It’s made by Loro Piana, and quite obviously beyond Mi-ok’s means.
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It → make → means
That's just one example of how Lee explores simple human wants, desires, jealousies.
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Lee → explore → jealousies
We often can't help wanting things we can't afford, especially when they've already been stamped by the approval of someone we admire.
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we → help → someone
Lee has dedicated the film to the memory of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog 10; he has said he was particularly struck by the commandment “Thou shalt not covet.”
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Thou → dedicate → commandment
As humans, we often like nice things, but what we really need is a way to keep a roof over our head and food on the table.
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need → like → table
Possible Love explores the desperation that can strike when we can’t meet those basic needs.
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we → explore → needs
Sang-woo, cocksure and a little clueless, spends much of the movie on the phone making business deals.
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woo → spend → deals
Meanwhile, Ho-seok suffers quietly, as if encased in a bubble of isolation.
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seok → suffer → isolation
Mi-ok loves him, but she’s frustrated with him; no wonder she’s drawn, perhaps romantically, to sexy and stalwart Sang-woo.
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she → love → woo
The movie’s most potent scene occurs late in the film when, with Ye-ji’s camera rolling, Ho-seok finally lets his guard down: Ye-ji may be getting the footage she set out for, but has she earned it honestly?
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she → occur → it
If the character he’s playing is key to Ye-ji’s movie-within-a-movie, he’s also Possible Love’s anguished beating heart.
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he → play → movie
Lee’s 2018 noir mystery Burning was, what we used to call in the days before the pandemic, a surprise art-house hit.
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we → use → pandemic
An art-house hit today may not mean the same thing as it did then, given how much the cinema-going audience has shrunk in less than 10 years.
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audience → mean → years
It’s hard to predict whether Possible Love will find a similarly enthusiastic audience.
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Love → ’ → audience
This is perhaps a more plainspoken movie than Burning; its moral questions are fairly easy to identify and parse.
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questions → identify → Burning
But at a time when more people worldwide are worrying about hanging onto gainful employment, even as a relatively small handful of people control the majority of the world’s wealth, the dramatic pull of Possible Love may be even greater than that of Burning.
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pull → worry → Burning
Sometimes it’s a relief when a movie captures undercurrents of anxiety that, in our daily lives, we find difficult to put into words.
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we → ’ → words
With Possible Love, it’s as if Lee has taken our unspoken feelings and handed them to his actors.
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Lee → ’ → actors
…and 1 more, not listed.
The Aporia
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