Lee Chang-dong Returns to Venice After Eight Years with Possible Love

Lee Chang-dong has premiered his first feature film in eight years at Venice. The Korean director's new work, Possible Love, screened at the festival and earned a review from the Guardian calling it "a finely judged, beautifully acted and rather novelistic work."

The film is a tale of two couples. Jeon Do-yeon, who previously worked with Lee on Secret Sunshine, and Sul Kyung-gu play Mi-ok and Ho-seok, a deeply unhappy married couple from a blue-collar background with a young son. Ho-seok is angry, depressed and struggling with a drinking problem after a catastrophic end to a strike at the factory where he worked.

At the funeral of a colleague who has taken his own life, the couple meet a fashionable, wealthy pair making a documentary about the injustice of the factory workers' treatment. This second couple have a dog instead of a child, a detail that signals the film's attention to class contrast.

What makes the film stand out?

The Guardian's review highlights the film's intelligence and its respect for the audience, noting it "pays its audience the compliment of treating them as intelligent also."

The strongest passages are the flashback scenes:

• Superb flashbacks to two characters' early lives
• Moments the reviewer describes as "pure inspiration"
• Expansive storytelling scope across two couples' lives

The review expresses one regret: the flashbacks were phased out relatively early, and the film did not do more to connect them with the present-day story.

Where does the film falter?

The reviewer finds Possible Love "perhaps a little contrived and self-aware." The film appears unsure how much emphasis to place on its moments of irony and comedy. Yet these reservations sit alongside a clear verdict: the film "is made with such fluency and verve."

The casting carries weight of its own. Jeon Do-yeon's reunion with Lee Chang-dong, eighteen years after her award-laden turn in Secret Sunshine, marks the director's return to the long-form intimacy of feature filmmaking after an eight-year absence.

What does this change for Lee Chang-dong's standing?

For a director whose previous features placed him among the most closely watched auteurs in world cinema, an eight-year gap raises the question of whether the new work can sustain that reputation. On this evidence, it can. The Guardian's review, published on 6 September from Venice, finds the film finely judged and beautifully acted, with reservations about structure but none about craft.

The film's subject gives it contemporary bite. A strike's catastrophic aftermath, a worker's suicide and a wealthy couple documenting the injustice for their own purposes form the moral core of a story about exploitation and friendship. That Lee chooses to tell it through two couples, one with a child and one with a dog, suggests the film's class critique will travel well beyond the festival circuit.