Possible Love, 2026.
Directed by Lee Chang-dong
Starring Jeon Do-yeon, Sul Kyung-gu, Zo In-sung, Cho Yeo-jeong.
SYNOPSIS:
Four strangers’ paths cross by chance, leading to complex emotional entanglements that challenge their existing relationships and force them to confront uncomfortable truths about love and commitment.
2018’s Burning made South Korean director Lee Chang-dong into a household name, and his first offering since, Possible Love, is a different sort of film but nonetheless impressive. It’s a slow burn at 2 hrs 40, charting the relationship between two married couples at the opposite end of the social spectrum.
Mi-ok works in a factory and her husband Ho-seok has been laid off by his work at the firm SP Heavy Industries and struggling to find work. The pair find themselves the subjects of a documentary film from Lee Ye-ji, her husband Sang-woo far more affluent. Chang-dong explores the dynamics between this quartet and how they come to form a friendship, despite their clear differences in lifestyle and societal views.
The film is a commentary on the class system in South Korea, but there are many parallels that can be seen for other countries as well. In some ways, it is a fascinating companion piece to 2025’s No Other Choice, dealing with similar subject matter in a completely different way. The topic might not seem like it deserves such a lengthy runtime but by its close it more than earns it, Chang-dong fully investing the audience in the story and slowly dissecting the characterisations of each of the main cast and how they interact with each other.
It is an incredibly rich, textured film with a novelistic feel to the storytelling. Chang-dong cleverly plays with our expectations of where the story will go and what each of the characters means to the others. The central relationships are a microcosm for examining wider societal issues, Ho-seok and his colleagues having taken part in a workers’ strike at the company being sold off calling those who remain at the company the living while those who have been passed over are the dead. It’s a hard hitting story that lurks at the beating heart of the story.
There are questions of identity and fascination with class that recall Parasite (which also starred Cho Yeo-jeong) both Mi-ok and Lee Ye-ji are fascinated by the other, but how truthful is the relationship and is it all purely for the purpose of making the documentary. Sang-woo at one point questions how real it all is and her “method acting” yet for much of the film it is earnest or at least seems to be. There are also hints at desire from the quartet that isn’t necessarily acted upon but the central cast all commit wonderfully and it is masterfully restrained filmmaking from Chang-dong. The way he weaves the past into the story, far more reserved than other filmmakers might be, there is rarely a frame that feels wasted.
Possible Love is a delightful film that never plays to convention or expectation. It might be a different beast to something like Burning but at the end of the 2hrs 40 everything feels like it has come to the perfect conclusion, a slow burner perhaps but one that is worth the audience’s patience. It has much to say about class, the state of the labour market in South Korea and friendship. The performances really make the film sing, with Jeon Do-yeon particularly captivating as Mi-ok, but there is not a weak link among them, each giving a huge amount of depth to their characters, none what they appear at first glance. This is filmmaking of the highest quality and hopefully will find a wider audience on Netflix and come awards season.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Connor
