Lee's fathomless, curious (in both senses) eighth feature delivers wit, soul, social insight and a scintillating central turn from his "Secret Sunshine" star, Jeon Do-yeon. One of the key moments from Lee Chang-dong‘s last film, 2018’s “Burning,” still glows bright in the memory. A girl mimes eating a tangerine, and explains the knack for making it convincing: don’t try to pretend there is a tangerine, try to forget there is not.
It’s a little zen koan that rhymes imperfectly in “Possible Love,” Lee’s wonderfully rich and deep new movie, when Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon, delivering one of the most intricate performances of the year) is entranced by the fancy house by the sea to which she has been invited. And yet Lee’s elegantly unshowy filmmaking, typified by DP Kim Ji-yong’s coolly discreet photography, and the inner life that Jeon suggests is being lived behind Mi-ok’s bright, disingenuous eyes, are grounded in the prosaic reality, trenchantly observed, of Korean classism and labor exploitation. It is perhaps only Lee Chang-dong who can so seamlessly integrate such radically separate themes and moods, with every event being of consequence but nothing feeling forced.
Mi-ok is married to Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu, from Lee’s “Peppermint Candy” and “Oasis”) a heavy-industry worker who has recently been fired following an unsuccessful strike at the factory that is the area’s biggest employer. Their son Cheol (Jung Seop) seems to have inherited his father’s taciturn disposition. He’s a quiet, watchful boy with the habit of hiding in closets or lurking near doorways the better to hear how adults talk when they think no kids are around.
But perhaps his father is not naturally so surly; later will come a moment when Ho-seok’s dam breaks and we realize, with a stab of profoundest sympathy, just what a vast reservoir of hurt it has been holding in check. There has been a rash of suicides following the factory-wide layoffs. At a funeral for one fallen friend Ho-seok, feeling shunned by his erstwhile strike comrades, gets into a soju-fuelled altercation.
It’s defused by Mi-ok, but they’ve caught the eye of Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong, of “Parasite” fame), a pretty, well-heeled aspiring filmmaker shooting footage for a high-minded documentary about the human cost of corporate downsizing. Ho-seok declines to participate, but Mi-ok becomes Ye-ji’s interview subject, and then, after a fashion, her friend. There is perhaps a subtle critique here, of the predatory instincts of the filmmaker towards their subject, of the desire to invade someone else’s life and shape their reality according to your own will.
These are instincts that Lee has somehow been born without; his subjects may be fictional creations but, especially as embodied by such a fine cast, they’re allowed to live and breathe their own private existences, their own personal idiosyncrasies, yielding characters who are almost as unknowably strange as, in your secret heart, you know yourself to be. Their unequal friendship does however bring Mi-ok into the social orbit of Ye-ji’s moneyed, attractive husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung). She is a little awed by him at first, made almost shy in his presence — he’s the kind of enigma who is solid only when viewed in your peripheral vision, as though his surface dazzle makes him hard look at directly.
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