South Korean director Lee Chang-dong returns with Possible Love, a 164-minute drama inspired by a real-life 2009 factory strike and the brutal police crackdown and mass lay-offs that followed. The film opens at the funeral of a former worker at SP Heavy Industries who took his own life. His wife Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) attends, while Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu), a fellow former employee, cannot bring himself to leave his car — clearly more traumatised by events.
A documentary that changes everything
Also present is Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), a woman filming the ceremony whose intrusion immediately unsettles Ho-seok. Ye-ji, the wife of wealthy businessman Sang-woo (Zo In-sung), wants to make a documentary about labour disputes. She appears caring and genuine, soon winning Mi-ok's trust and enthusing that the sacked couple will form the core of her film.
While Mi-ok cheerfully gives on-camera interviews, Ho-seok refuses to speak. He is the dark, walking dead heart of the story. The sacked employees are referred to as "the dead" and those still employed as "the living". One night, Ho-seok misses his son's 10th birthday, sitting alone in a restaurant watching the birthday party of a still-employed colleague's child to see what "living" is like. "I felt like a dead phantom," he recalls later.
Class divides unravel by the sea
Ye-ji soon entwines the two couples' lives with dinner dates and, finally, a weekend invitation to Sang-woo's opulent seaside holiday home. But long before this, Lee subtly carves rifts into the narrative. There is a hint to Mi-ok that Sang-woo may be one of the private equity figures preparing to flip her former company for a quick profit. And Sang-woo congratulates his wife on the "great method acting" she is doing in her role as an empathetic director.
Flashbacks to how Mi-ok and Ho-seok met as sweet teens and news footage of Ho-seok's savage beating by authorities are woven into the uneasy foursome's lives. Lee subtly, steadily builds characters rarely so fully formed. All four actors, particularly Jeon, are superb.
While Ho-seok rails against the hollowness of the "solidarity and resistance" his colleagues had professed before abandoning him to the police batons, the dignity through work he has lost is heart-crushing. The indignity and incompatibility of rich and poor is brought escalatingly — some might say melodramatically — home as the couples' brief honeymoon period unravels beside the sea.
A question left open
Why Lee titled the movie Possible Love is left open, as the potential for genuine empathy across class divides and fractured lives is lovingly put under the microscope. For those who like their movies real, this is possibly the finest they will see for a long while. Possible Love screens at the London Film Festival on October 18 and is on general release from October 23.
