Every great love story, in Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong‘s telling, is secretly a story about love that cannot happen — class, status or fate standing in the way. His new film dares to ask the opposite question, and it took him the better part of two decades, one abandoned script about a 2009 workers’ strike and a single idea from his co-writer to find an answer worth filming.
“When we think about a love story, usually the most typical love story we think about is love that cannot come true,” Lee says about Venice competition title “Possible Love,” his first feature since 2018’s “Burning.” “So to simply put it, you could say that all of these love stories are called impossible love, so to speak.”
“Possible Love” follows Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon), who works at a mask factory while dealing with the fallout of her husband Ho-seok’s (Sul Kyung-gu) layoff and the strike that followed it. A funeral draws the couple into contact with Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), a filmmaker shooting a documentary about laid-off workers, and her husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung); they are a couple whose money and detachment set them apart from Mi-ok and Ho-seok’s daily struggle. Once Mi-ok signs on to be filmed, a bond forms with Ye-ji, while something harder to name pulls her toward the unreadable Sang-woo, and the two households’ collision starts to crack open both marriages. Zo and Cho are working with Lee for the first time.
