\u201cSecret Sunshine\u201d<\/a>) be around others. With these blue collar parents\u2019 grade-school-age son a tangibly quiet presence, a seemingly impassable unhappiness oozes from the opening scenes. The appearance inside the funeral home, however, of a documentary crew interviewing laid-off workers spurs Mi-ok to engage with the outgoing director, Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), whose reserved, well-to-do husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung) is in tow. When Mi-ok agrees to participate in Ye-ji\u2019s film, a friendship forms.<\/p>\nIs it friendship, though, or a mutually useful rapport? The women couldn\u2019t be more unalike in terms of background and status. Mi-ok has to tell Ye-ji that her expensive clothes don\u2019t jibe with someone championing labor issues. But they have a breezy, even jokey openness, fed by the stories Mi-ok tells on camera as well as soju-fueled double dates with their spouses. They also have in common husbands who are remote, albeit for vastly different reasons. Hedge-fund-rich Sang-woo has an air of cool privilege, while the gloomy, taciturn Ho-seok harbors unprocessed trauma about what happened during the strike, the details of which are judiciously doled out to us in flashbacks. (Lee drew the background for his scenario from a real-life labor protest met by a government crackdown that shocked the country.)<\/p>\n
But underneath what seems promising, the beginnings of empathy and maybe healing, there\u2019s something performative and calculated in this fast bond. There are Ye-ji\u2019s filmic needs \u2014 \u201cI\u2019m trying to love these people,\u201d she says privately to Sang-woo after he calls her behavior with them \u201cMethod acting\u201d \u2014 and Mi-ok\u2019s swirl of intentions, hoping to save her husband with not ignoring the allure of her new pal\u2019s quietly confident and wealthy man. Right at the moment when more cracks materialize, Ye-ji invites this broken family for a shared weekend at Sang-woo\u2019s vacation mansion.<\/p>\n
You may be forgiven for anticipating a potboiler climax when a lush hideaway with a private beach is concerned, and what occurs there is indeed juicy. But that\u2019s only because Lee, in his finest screenplay to date, has laid out precisely where his vectors of hardship, exploitation, pent-up anguish and hidden desire are going to converge. Just add more alcohol and more reminders of these couples\u2019 experiential chasm, and Lee\u2019s command of irony in a simmering atmosphere is in a league all its own.<\/p>\n
The documentary angle, of course, is this great director probing the ethics in his own vocation as an intrusive force, one that shapes lives, emotions and, in this case, the weight of a genuine tragedy. In much the way he finessed a truth about art facing evil in \u201cPoetry,\u201d the camera here is both predatory and a tool for catharsis. In one scene, the confluence is literally breathtaking.<\/p>\n
Best-of lists were made for performances like Jeon\u2019s. With tear-swollen eyes and an anxious intelligence that imbues Mi-ok\u2019s mission of repair with heartbreaking energy, she is this movie\u2019s restless soul of want: a wife, lover, worker and mother trapped between the balm of recollecting better times and worry for the future. Alongside Sul\u2019s deftly handled, physical characterization of a proud man swallowed by hurt he could never imagine, \u201cPossible Love\u201d stands as one of the more sensitively wrought depictions of a wounded marriage you\u2019ll ever see.<\/p>\n
And when it\u2019s over, it somehow doesn\u2019t feel over. Maybe no scene better embodies Lee\u2019s exquisite communion with his characters than his last one, which supplies them with a hint of grace. \u201cPossible Love\u201d hovers over the moment\u2019s sublimity like the moonlight and I haven\u2019t stopped thinking about its elemental beauty since.<\/p>\n
‘Possible Love’<\/p>\n
In Korean with subtitles<\/p>\n
Rated: R, for language, some sexuality and nudity<\/p>\n
Running time: 2 hours, 44 minutes<\/p>\n
Playing: Opens Friday, Oct. 23, in limited release; on Netflix Nov. 6<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The brilliant Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong is a suffering protagonist\u2019s best friend, exploring the buried pain in people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[14058,16342,31906,146,878,294525,85,46,280819,3961,294526,224653,275159,42663,397,270361,42569,4377,275156],"class_list":["post-654825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-background","tag-couple","tag-desire","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-hedge-fund-rich-sang-woo","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-jeon-do-yeon","tag-labor","tag-late-movie","tag-lee-chang-dong","tag-mi-ok","tag-moment","tag-movies","tag-possible-love","tag-scene","tag-worker","tag-ye-ji"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}