[Dispatch=Reporter Jung Tae-yoon] The film "Possible Love" (Director Lee Chang-dong) does not actively cross the line. It does not push forward in a way where someone's desire explodes and relationships crumble at once.

Instead, it maintains a lukewarm temperature for a long time. It is uncomfortable, yet not hot enough to abandon your seat immediately. That is why you come to observe the emotions hidden in a single line of dialogue, a brief expression, and silence.

The long running time of 164 minutes flows in the same manner. It does not hold the audience through rapid editing or strong stimulation. It gazes at one scene for a long time and listens to one person's words until the end.

Following persistently, the density of the scenes and the temperature of the acting fill that time. Within it, what Director Lee Chang-dong wants to say is rather clear.

It asks about labor, class, desire, love, and the ethics of a creator in speaking of another's life. However, it does not attach an answer to that question.

At some moment, it presents a scene that seems like an answer, but immediately makes you doubt that answer.

At the center of it are four people. Ho-seok (played by Seol Kyung-gu), a laid-off worker, and his wife Mi-ok (played by Jun Do-yeon). Documentary director Yeji (played by Jo Yeo-jung) and her husband Sang-woo (played by Jo In-sung).

The four meet when Yeji films the lives of laid-off workers as a movie. The relationship with the camera between them grows increasingly complex.

For Ho-seok, the layoff is not merely one event of losing a job. It is something that destroys a person's life, changes family relationships, and shakes who one is.

The film allows the voices of laid-off workers to be heard at length. It has them speak their past and wounds directly. These scenes matter not simply to convey the information that "laid-off workers experience such suffering."

It is because it shows how a camera should capture a person's story. The way Yeji films them is therefore uncomfortable.

Even when Ho-seok wails and pours out his wounds, Yeji is restless while checking whether the camera is recording well. She even follows him secretly and films him.

Yet one cannot easily condemn Yeji. Everyone cries seeing another's sadness, speaks of another's misfortune, and consumes their suffering as content.

Film is also a medium that shows another's life. Can we speak of others' stories without consuming their lives? Director Lee Chang-dong's question thrown as a filmmaker touches here as well.

Sang-woo asks Yeji, "You are doing method acting. You are different from those people yet believe you are the same, are you not?" Yeji answers, "I am loving them."

At this point, the title gradually reveals itself. Yeji believes she loves them. Not pity or use, she believes. The film questions again.

Is that really possible love? Even in the moment we believe we love, are we not desiring another's life? Can the heart to understand and the heart to possess truly be separated?

So one cannot simply define whether Yeji is a good person or a bad person. The film has a clear message, yet does not make the character a means to deliver that message.

What is interesting about Yeji is that she does not erase that desire. Yeji is a person who wants to understand Mi-ok and Ho-seok, while simultaneously wanting to make their lives into her work.

Perhaps she is the one among the four who most strongly covets another's life. Yet Yeji believes that desire is love. Jo Yeo-jung does not attempt to convince the audience of that belief.

Rather, she acts as though throwing a question at herself. Like someone asking themselves why they cannot put down the camera, she holds onto that conviction to the end.

So Yeji is neither a hypocritical creator nor a pure observer. She stands between the desire to make another's life into a work and the conviction to call it love.

The remaining three are the same. Mi-ok is spirited. Though betrayed by life multiple times, she still does not let go of hope.

Though she knows that money and class can shake a person's values, she tries to protect her own. So even in moments that seem foolish, she is strangely firm.

It is the same when Yeji stands before workers' faces dressed in expensive clothes. Mi-ok asks the price of the clothes. When Yeji evades, she speaks again. The clothes seem out of place here.

She does not indirectly speak of the class difference she feels but pinpoints it accurately. Jun Do-yeon does not confine Mi-ok to a single sentence of a hopeful person.

She sings, covets, puts on airs, and even acts impulsively at moments. All those emotions connect naturally within one person.

Ho-seok, by contrast, is someone withdrawn inward. Though living with the wounds of layoff and violent crackdown on strikes, he does not easily reveal his inner self.

He is taciturn, cantankerous, and avoids people. Yet this Ho-seok opens his mouth little by little before the camera.

Ho-seok's wound appears like a past event, yet is in the present tense. The reason the film speaks of labor yet ultimately expands to the relationship between humans is here.

Losing a job is not only losing money but also losing one language to explain who I am.

Seol Kyung-gu does not play Ho-seok as a wounded person from the start. That is why the emotions that burst out late are more painful.

Sang-woo outwardly is a man who has everything. He is wealthy, his work goes well. He is polite and at ease. Yet that ease turns into arrogance at some point. Like someone who believes he can have anything if he wants.

He appears to be on the extension of Ben from "Burning" (played by Steven Yeun). A life lacking nothing, a smoothly smiling face, and a person who ultimately does not reveal what lies beneath.

Jo In-sung does not reveal much about Sang-woo. He does not raise his voice or pour out emotion. He is always far away in the camera frame. Yet it is terrifying. The things not expressed remain chill instead.

The film does not flow at the same temperature throughout. The lukewarm emotion accumulated gradually begins to boil from the moment the four gather at a villa.

Mi-ok sees the freedom Sang-woo has, and Sang-woo discovers in Mi-ok something he does not possess. Ho-seok wavers between his past and present self, and Yeji tries to capture all those scenes on camera.

No one explicitly drew a line, yet at some point everyone is gazing at each other's things. That desire appears as love, admiration, or jealousy.

Only then does one understand why the film's first sentence was "Covet not another's things." The story that began with labor and class ultimately returns to human desire.

The final scene leaves a particularly long aftertaste. Mi-ok and Ho-seok sit in the yard and gaze at the full moon. The film does not explain what that moon is. It only makes you gaze at it for a long time.

Not all films need to carry a message of the times. They need not teach anything. And yet "Possible Love" has Lee Chang-dong's resolve to say something.

However, he does not persuade hotly. He draws it out at a lukewarm temperature for a long time. So the question does not cool even after the film ends. It quietly plants that voice and makes you ponder it for a long time.

"Impossible Love, Possible Lee Chang-dong" ("Possible Love" ★★★★)

<Photo source=Netflix>