In a welcome piece of stories for followers of Asian arthouse cinema, Netflix has set Lee Chang-dong‘s much-anticipated drama Possible Love — the revered Korean auteur’s first movie since 2018’s Burning — for a restricted launch in U.S. theaters on Oct. 23 forward of its worldwide streaming launch on Nov. 6.
Netflix is positioning the movie — certainly one of its most intellectual options of the autumn — for an awards-season run. Possible Love will make its world premiere in September on the Venice Film Festival, the place it’ll vie for the Golden Lion, adopted by a North American debut as a gala choice on the Toronto International Film Festival.
Possible Love reunites Lee with two of his most completed earlier collaborators. The movie stars Jeon Do-yeon, who gained the Cannes greatest actress prize because the shattered lead of Lee’s Secret Sunshine in 2007, and Sul Kyung-gu, the unforgettable lead of the director’s early masterpieces Peppermint Candy (1999) and Oasis (2002). They are joined by Zo In-sung (Moving, Escape from Mogadishu) and Cho Yeo-jeong (greatest identified globally because the gullible wealthy spouse of Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite).
Netflix additionally shared a poster and a first-look nonetheless from the movie on Tuesday together with the discharge plans. The poster reveals the movie’s two feminine leads, Jeon and Cho, standing aside beneath moonlit timber at daybreak — the body’s pervasive stillness carrying an unmistakable cost of unease. Similarly, the nonetheless reveals the ensemble solid standing by the ocean, with their glances carrying an advanced sense of emotional intrigue.
Beyond the solid and artwork, little has been revealed about Lee’s new function past an official plot abstract: “Possible Love follows the intertwined relationship of two married couples facing different paths and hidden desires. Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) lives quietly with her laid-off husband Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) and their young son Cheol until a funeral brings them into the orbit of Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), a documentary filmmaker chronicling laid-off workers, and her husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung) — a couple whose affluent lifestyle stands in sharp contrast to their own. When Mi-ok agrees to be filmed, she grows close to Ye-ji, and finds herself uneasily drawn to the unreadable Sang-woo. As their worlds collide, fractures begin to appear in their daily existence.”
Although he’s by no means obtained an Oscar nom or had a movie make a lot worldwide industrial affect, Lee’s work has accrued a stage of reverence amongst world cineastes that few auteurs can match. Across six options in three a long time, the novelist-turned-director — who additionally served, improbably, as South Korea’s tradition minister within the early 2000s — has picked aside the emotional fault strains of Korean society with a spare, literary depth. Along the best way, he picked up Venice’s particular director’s prize for Oasis, the Cannes screenplay award for Poetry (2010) and, with Burning, the Cannes critics’ prize and the excellence of turning into the primary Korean movie shortlisted for an Oscar within the worldwide function class.
Lee co-wrote Possible Love together with his Burning writing associate Oh Jung-mi. Pinehouse Film, the Korean outfit that additionally backed Burning, produces alongside Anonymous Content and NOWFILM. The movie is a U.S.-Korea co-production.
“I’m not the type of filmmaker who can make movies easily,” Lee stated in a press release accompanying the discharge date announcement on Netflix’s Tudum web site. “Before I begin a film, I must be certain of what it means — to me, to the audience, and to cinema itself. That is why Possible Love took so long to make.”
Netflix
