★★★★☆
Lee Chang-dong’s first film in eight years is a patient, unsettling and finally devastating study of what the comfortable take from the people they set out to help.
Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) works in a paper factory and smiles at almost everyone. Her husband, Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu), barely smiles at all; he has not recovered from a strike that failed. Into their lives come Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), a documentary-maker trying to get a film about mass layoffs off the ground, and her wealthy husband, Sang-woo (Zo In-sung). Ye-ji has been looking for a subject. In Mi-ok she thinks she has found one.
The two couples see more and more of each other, over drinks, dinners and a child’s birthday party, and Ye-ji’s camera is nearly always running. For a while the ever-present camera is a running joke, and then it starts to look like theft. The question of what Ye-ji is actually doing for Mi-ok would sustain most films. Lee also folds in the labour disputes that inspired the story, through flashbacks and a present-day reunion between Ho-seok and a former workmate. The film is dedicated “In memory of Dekalog 10″, and the nod is apt: Kieślowski’s tenth film in the cycle is about coveting what belongs to your neighbour, and here what is coveted is a neighbour’s story.
Jeon, working with Lee for the first time since Secret Sunshine, is extraordinary: Mi-ok’s openness is the film’s engine and its wound. Zo plays Sang-woo’s ease with money as something close to a threat, and the scenes that bring all four together are almost unbearably tense. The wider political story occasionally slows things down, but there’s always a knowing detail ready to drop, and a quiet punchline around the corner. One moment, where Ye-ji emerges from some bushes, camera in hand, had me howling with joy, and embarrassment.
Possible Love is smart, funny, painful, penetrating and occasionally excruciating – and shows once again that Lee Chang-dong is a master of his craft.
Possible Love played at the London Film Festival and is streaming now on Netflix.