Possible Love

Possible Love screens at Watershed on Friday 23 October, part of the 70th BFI London Film Festival on Tour. It's the new film from Lee Chang-dong, and for those who've followed his work, it's a long-awaited one: his first release in eight years, following Poetry and Secret Sunshine, and his first since Burning in 2019.

The story follows two married couples whose lives collide. There's Mi-ok, played by Jeon Do-yeon, and her laid-off husband Ho-seok, played by Sul Kyung-gu; and Ye-ji, a documentary filmmaker played by Cho Yeo-jeong, with her husband Sang-woo, played by Zo In-sung. A chance meeting brings Ye-ji into the orbit of Mi-ok's family, whose lives have been upended by Ho-seok's unemployment, and they become the subjects of her documentary on made-redundant workers. As their connection deepens, the stark class divide between them fractures the collaboration, forcing them to confront their marriages and the wider world they inhabit.

It's a slow-burn of a setup—the documentary within the film acting as the bridge between two very different worlds. The cast is a heavy-hitting one, with Jeon Do-yeon and Sul Kyung-gu taking the lead as the couple at the centre of the storm, and Cho Yeo-jeong and Zo In-sung as the filmmaker and her husband. If you're familiar with Chang-dong's previous work, you'll know he tends to let these kinds of domestic tensions simmer until they boil over, and this looks like it follows that same patient, character-driven path.

The screening is part of the BFI London Film Festival on Tour at Watershed, which has brought 14 previews from the festival's biggest year yet to Bristol. Possible Love runs for 15, and the session starts at 19:30.