‘Possible Love’ review: An elegant evisceration of the limits of caring
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In the eight years since the brilliant Burning, was Lee Chang-dong lurking at documentary festivals and pitching forums, where filmmakers claim to explore reality but also sometimes manipulate and essentially manufacture it? The South Korean director new movie Possible Love suggests a fine reading not just of human relationships but also of the documentary aesthetic.
Out on Netflix after winning two awards at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year, Possible Love is a quietly damning exploration of the limits of compassion. The beautifully performed film follows two couples separated by economic class and brought together by an earnest documentary project.
Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu), his wife Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) and their son Cheol (Jung Seol) meet documentary filmmaker Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong) and her spouse Sang-woo (Zo In-sung) at a funeral. Like the recently departed man, Ho-seok has been sacked from an automobile company that is underdoing restructuring – a euphemism for the culling of unionised workers who have participated in a strike to defend their rights.
Ye-ji badly wants to interview Ho-seok for her documentary Vanishing Labourer. Traumatised by job loss and feelings of betrayal and worthlessness, Ho-seok avoid Ye-ji’s camera as assiduously as Mi-ok courts it.
The two women rapidly forge a bond over Mi-ok’s eager-to-be-seen manner and Ye-ji’s ambition to capture a lived-in...