By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Two couples from very different socio-economic backgrounds spend several days together making a documentary. Two of them are factory workers. Two of them are rich. Two live in a modest home in the city. Two have a vacation home with a private beach. Will their time spent together bring them closer or farther apart? Will they become better friends or worse enemies?
Image provided by Netflix
This is some of what’s there to unpack in the new South Korean movie, “Possible Love.” It is the first movie from director Lee Chan-dong in eight years. Lee himself tends to skew towards the worker, with his father having been a leftist activist and his mother a seamstress. In the film, Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) has been laid off by his factory. He and several of the laid-off workers (who are called “the dead,” with “the living” being those that didn’t lose their jobs) stage a strike. Their wives and families also participate. Even though their reasons for striking are tragic, it is one of the few times in many of their lives that they have felt energized, happy, and united. Sadly, things do not go their way. The police are sent in, and the strike is brutally struck down.
(Left to right) Couple 1: Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) and Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) and Couple 2: Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong) and Sang-woo (Zo In-sung). Image provided by Netflix.
The movie is reminiscent of the worldwide economic downturn from 2007 to 2009 and more than one labor strike in South Korea. The strike that might most closely resemble the one in the movie took place in 2009, at the end of the downturn—the Ssangyong Motor strike. This was a 77-day strike in which laid-off workers fought for their jobs and protested corporate exploitation. In “Possible Love,” Ho-seok’s company has accepted investment from a private equity fund. If you know anything about the corporate world, this is a red flag. You can say goodbye to human feelings. It’s all for profit now. Ho-seok’s company is restructured to sell. Thus, the layoffs.
Enter the documentary filmmaker, Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), who wants to record Ho-seok and Mi-ok, his wife (Jeon Do-yeon), as they struggle in the aftermath of the strike. It might seem that Ye-ji’s selection of which couple to most closely follow is random. Maybe. Maybe not. There are a lot of secrets in this movie, and the mood is very tense. It almost feels like a horror film at times. What is horrific is the casual way that the workers are treated by the rich and by the government. Ye-ji, although she received a grant for the documentary, is married to Sang-woo (Zo In-sung), who is very wealthy. However, it is pointed out that he does not fund any of her films.
The two couples are vastly different, from dress to living situation to the way they treat their spouses. Mi-ok and Ho-seok are conservative by South Korean standards. They don’t call each other by their first names. If a person pours you a drink, you drink it. Courtesy. Yi-ji and Sang-woo do their own thing. They call each other by their first names, and they say “no” when they feel like it. We never quite know what Mi-ok and Ho-seok think about this. Do they find the other couple’s behavior exhilarating or do they disapprove? Mi-ok does most of the talking while Ho-seok is very quiet throughout. He seems to be the one most affected by the strike. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He has anger issues. He has drinking issues. But it’s all much deeper than we think, and the layers are revealed throughout the course of this very long yet riveting movie.
After many excruciating days together, with Ye-ji chronicling every uncomfortable moment of the couple’s lives, Ye-ji invites them to Sang-woo’s beach house for the weekend. She frames it as taking a break. Really, she is intent on getting Ho-seok to talk. You’re doing a great job of method acting, Sang-woo says to Ye-ji in the car on the way to the beach house. The façade starts to crack. I’m not, Ye-ji protests. I really care. “We’re not like them,” Sang-woo reminds her. Details come out. Sang-woo’s grandfather was a police officer. Sang-woo still keeps his grandfather’s police whistle as a memento. Sang-woo and Ye-ji have a servant. Sang-woo is an owner. If you think things are going to get nasty, they do, but not in the way you expect. Sang-woo is perfectly congenial. Ye-ji is creepily obsessed with her film, but after all, Ho-seok and Mi-ok gave her permission. Ho-seok is increasingly cognizant of how his trauma is impacting his family. Mi-ok seems submissive and yet has flashes of insight, such as when she points out that maybe Ye-ji shouldn’t dress so expensively when interviewing jobless factory workers.
The most heartbreaking part of many heartbreaking parts in the film is how much the workers identified with their jobs. It was, in that sense, very reminiscent of the many that lost their jobs during the downturn in the early 2000s. Around the world, people didn’t know how to cope, what to do next. Their jobs were who they were. The workers in the film feel “trampled on.” They feel acutely that a great injustice was done to them, for no reason. “I don’t know if I’ll ever understand why the government did that to us,” Mi-ok says. They miss the sense of shared purpose they had during the strike which, also, might have been as much of an illusion as having job security. “I see why it’s called a liberated zone,” says one woman of the strike camp. They were convinced a “better world” was just around the corner, she continues. And now? That’s why she suffers, as punishment, she says. Because humans aren’t supposed to feel that kind of joy.
Why is the movie called “Possible Love”? In Korean, it’s called “Ganeunghan Sarang.” While you watch the film, you could be thinking about how it was always possible for things to go differently. The workers could have kept their jobs. The couples could have gained an understanding, and somehow bridged the gap. Everything was possible through love. None of it happened.
“Possible Love” is in limited release in theaters and streams on Netflix on Nov. 6.
Kai can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.
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