“An absolute knockout of a film about love having the possibility to bridge divides and deliver freedom, even for a brief moment.”

“Thou shalt not covet”

In 2009 factory workers at Korea’s SsangYong Motor launched a historic 77-day strike against mass layoffs that resulted from a corporate restructuring plan. Eventually riot police and government forces brutally broke up the strike using highly toxic tear gas and direct bodily violence. The strike left a scar across Korea’s work force, and became a symbol of state-sanctioned violence against its own people. The trauma even inspired the backstory of the main character in Netflix’s Squid Game, in which a laid-off auto worker sees his colleague being beaten to death during a violently suppressed strike.

What does all of this have to do with love, or even possible love? Lee Chang-dong’s latest film, Possible Love, does indeed deal with love and the desire for the things we do not have but think we want. “Thou shalt not covet” is a streak that runs through the film, but it does so against a background that seems heavily inspired by that infamous strike. The film’s strike that was modeled on it informs not just the actions, but the psyche of the characters affected by it, either directly or indirectly. In Lee Chang-dong’s patient hands, Possible Love becomes a film not just about love and desire, but about union and community, about empathy for and solidarity with those that matter to us, about perseverance and class divides, and ultimately about the bond between two people bound by love.

When Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) and Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) attend the funeral of a former co-worker, they cross paths with Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), a filmmaker who is making a documentary about workers that were laid off two years prior. She happens to be there because the deceased committed suicide, not uncommon among those who were let go after their strike was violently broken up by riot police. Since that time, Ho-seok has turned inward, and his marriage to Mi-ok has deteriorated. The home situation also seems to have affected their young son Cheol, who has developed facial tics, and like his father has become introverted. Mi-ok hits it off with Ye-ji and lets the latter interview her, which eventually leads to dinner with the three and Ye-ji’s husband, Sang-woo (Zo In-sung). Mi-ok is impressed by her new friend, and not just because of her expensive handbag or shirt, or even Sang-woo’s Porsche, but also by Sang-woo himself. Ye-ji works her way into the lives of her new friends in hopes of Ho-seok opening up, but it is actually when he follows a former co-worker, one of the ‘living’ as he calls those that were allowed to stay at the company, that he finally agrees to do an interview with Ye-ji. When their new, rich friends invite Mi-ok and Ho-seok for a short holiday in Sang-woo’s childhood villa, Mi-ok enthusiastically agrees. It is there on the coast that she finds the freedom she has craved for so long, freedom from the worries for her husband and the cause of his depression. But it is also there that she realises she will never be able to bridge the gap between her life and the lives of Ye-ji and Sang-woo.

Like in many of Lee’s films, remembering plays an important role, from Mi-ok’s childhood memory of the way the sunlight played in the spray as her mother washed cars for a living, to the memories of Ho-seok and some of the other ‘dead ones’ (the people that were laid off) at the group therapy sessions he finally agrees to join. It is the recall of that fated day when government forces came to break up the strike that Ho-seok has repressed though, a memory so painful not only for the physical harm, but the sense of betrayal when he saw his co-workers, his ‘brothers’ that he had built a hangout place for at his home, fleeing while he was half beaten to death. When this story comes out in front of Ye-ji’s camera, it leads to one of the most powerful moments of Possible Love, with a tremendous bit of acting by Sul Kyung-gu.

The whole cast is firing on all cylinders. Zo In-sung seemingly has the easiest job, coasting on his charm and good looks, but his Sang-woo comes to life whenever Mi-ok is around. Whether the looks they exchange reveal a deeper desire or are just a bit of flirting remains uncertain at first, but at least Sang-woo is the most honest, if somewhat haughty character in the film. When he confronts his wife with the fact that she is feigning her interest in the lower-class family, he hits the nail on the head. Ye-ji in general seems oblivious of her privilege. She says she became interested in documenting these laborers after her husband pointed out that the ‘paradise in the desert’ she found in Qatar was built on the blood, sweat, and tears of ‘invisible’ workers from countries like Bangladesh and Nepal. Yet once they arrive at their summer home it doesn’t register that they have similar invisible servants around the house to cook for them or tend to the sprawling garden. Sang-woo knows where he stands, far above the level of their guests, but Ye-ji fools herself about her concern for the working class.

Possible Love has a surprisingly strong emphasis on social issues, which form the backbone of the story and of Mi-ok and Ho-seok’s life. Workers’ rights, union strength and weakness, and an anti-corporate streak running through the film create the background against which the ‘possible love’ between Mi-ok and Sang-woo plays out, as well as the ‘possible love’ that Ye-ji has for her new friend Mi-ok and the introverted Ho-seok. She repeatedly calls Mi-ok ‘sister’ or playfully tells her ‘yes, bitch’, but what does she truly feel for this woman who eloped with her husband when they were barely out of their teens? In a way, the documentary filmmaker mirrors Lee himself, who realizes he is just as privileged and questions himself about why he chose to make this film with this subject matter, as he said at a press conference. The film was long in the making, with the SsangYong strike the inciting incident, and at one time was attached to a project that aims to remake Kieslowski’s Dekalog as ten features (Ashgar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales from this year’s Cannes festival is one of them). Eventually Possible Love became independent of that, although the film still opens with the tenth commandment and has a tribute to the Polish master and his longtime collaborator (including on Dekalog), Krzysztof Piesiewicz.

The film also touches upon other social issues, such as alcoholism. Ho-seok likes his soju (one could almost mistake Possible Love for a Hong Sang-soo film when it comes to this), but is not allowed by Mi-ok to drink it outside his home, because he has a history of becoming violent when on the sauce. However, during the pandemic and in particular after the incidents of the strike she has quietly joined him in this habit. Ye-ji participates a few times out of politeness, and perhaps to identify with the lower classes, but for Mi-ok and Ho-seok it’s clearly a drinking problem.

This is just one of many layers Possible Love goes through before it moves beyond not coveting thy neighbor’s house, a commandment squarely aimed at Mi-ok, and gets to not coveting thy neighbor’s wife (or husband, but these Old Testament laws were a bit male-centric), to be heeded by both her and Sang-woo. It all leads to a beach scene between them in which Mi-ok takes her moment of freedom, and a pas de deux-cum-bullfight that is quietly erotic without ever crossing a line. It’s also one of the most exciting scenes of the film. Jeon delivers moment after moment throughout the film, and in a cast of top performances manages to still stand out, but in this scene she balances between the sexual power and female fragility of her character so perfectly that it’s awe-inspiring. For this one fleeting instant her Mi-ok, the lowly working-class woman with a drinking problem and an emotionally withdrawn husband, holds power over someone from the highest echelons of society. If Possible Love isn’t destined for bigger things at the festival’s awards ceremony next week, Jeon could very well add a Venice trophy to her Cannes Best Actress prize for her first collaboration with Lee, 2007’s Secret Sunshine.

Possible Love is an incredibly rich film about forbidden desires and lost dreams, and a reflection of the gaping class chasm in Korean (but really any) society, with a daunting runtime that nonetheless flies by. It’s not as visually spectacular as Lee’s previous film Burning, with the documentary-style shots of Ye-ji’s film-within-a-film sometimes matched, sometimes contrasted by the photography of scenes from an objective point of view, switching between the two when it needs to reflect the characters’ arc changes. The end result is a far more social-realist approach, without much visual embellishment and only the occasional bit of trickery (a scene transition between young Cheol letting an empty chips pack fly from the car, to a flashback of a helicopter hovering threateningly over the strikers, especially stands out). The film falters a bit in two closing scenes that attempt to give closure to both couples, but end up either explicitly sexual, a strong contrast with the sensuality of hidden glances in the rest of the film, or overly sentimental where it doesn’t need to be. These are minor niggles though, for an exceptionally strong and rich tapestry of issues woven into the fabric of Possible Love, an absolute knockout of a film about love having the possibility to bridge divides and deliver freedom, even for a brief moment.