Lee Chang Dong’s seventh feature, Possible Love, is rooted in real events from 2009 when a Korean conglomerate laid off a third of its workforce—2,600 employees—and a wave of suicides followed. The film adds to a long series of Lee’s works that grapple with class, labor, religion, and the pressures of rapid modernization, a distinctly Korean struggle, while steering clear of preachy tones.
A different kind of movie might have captured the intensity of that labor battle. Possible Love instead picks up with the characters after the upheaval, entering a murkier period that defies simple explanation. The movie opens with an epigraph that reads, “Thou shall not covet.”