Possible Love Streams on Netflix November 6, and It Is Lee Chang-dong's First Film in Eight Years

Photo: Bryan Dorrough, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Lee Chang-dong has made one film in the eight years since Burning, and it arrives on Netflix worldwide on November 6. Possible Love won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at Venice, it is South Korea's entry for the international feature Oscar, and it played a short run in cinemas in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Ireland and Japan from October 23. I caught it on the big screen last week and have been quietly recommending it to everyone since.

It follows two married couples. Mi-ok and her husband Ho-seok, who has just been laid off, and Ye-ji and Sang-woo, who are wealthy and comfortable. Ye-ji is a documentary filmmaker who decides to make a film about laid-off workers, and that decision pulls the two marriages into each other's orbit. Jeon Do-yeon, Sul Kyung-gu, Zo In-sung and Cho Yeo-jeong play the four, and there is not a weak performance among them.

Photo: Marlene Landu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Lee's films always look like realism and always turn out to be about something you did not notice until the last twenty minutes. Burning did it with a greenhouse. This one does it with a camera, and with the question of who gets to tell someone else's story. It is slower than Burning and less showy, and I think it might be the better film.

Photo: Marlene Landu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Netflix also said it is bringing more of Lee's back catalogue to the service worldwide after the Venice win, which means Poetry and Secret Sunshine may finally be easy to find. Have you seen any of his earlier work, and which one should a newcomer start with?