The Netflix jewel that studies the twilight of the labor movement

In the brilliant filmic trajectory of Lee Chang-dong –which began in 1997 with Green fish, when the South Korean was 40 years old and an established novelist–, existential drama has always coexisted with an incisive study of contemporary social reality. This combination reappears in A Possible Love, a Netflix production in which the director of Oasis and Burning approaches the idea of class struggle, or what remains of it. Inspired by a real case of mass layoffs that took place in a large South Korean industry more than ten years ago, Lee composes a striking emotional X-ray of life within global capitalism.

Conceived as a tribute to the mythical series The Decalogue by Krzysztof Kieslowski –the film opens with a reference to the Christian commandment “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods”–, A Possible Love centers on the figures of two couples who represent the twilight of the labor movement and the consolidation of a dominant class sustained by obscene privilege. As is usual in Lee Chang-dong's cinema, the film is structured through long sequences –written with great sensitivity and filmed with elegance– that reveal the characters' intentions. One can appreciate the alienated fascination of the working-class woman for the wealth of the affluent couple; the trauma linked to the failure of the union struggle that the working husband reveals; the growing inhumanity that exudes from the rich husband's indolence, and the boundless ambition exhibited by the privileged woman who is filming a documentary about the poor couple. Finally, through the film within the film, A Possible Love presents a sharp meditation on the ethical limits that should prevail in the filmic representation of the suffering of others.