Possible Love Is on Netflix at 98 Percent. Critics Praise Jeon Do-yeon and Warn You About the 164 Minutes.

Lee Chang-dong had made only six features before this one, and the last was Burning in 2018. His seventh, Possible Love, has been streaming on Netflix worldwide since Friday, November 6, after a limited US theatrical run that began October 23. It arrives with the Silver Lion, the Grand Jury Prize, from Venice, a slot as South Korea's submission for Best International Feature at the 99th Academy Awards, and reviews most films never see.

On Rotten Tomatoes it holds 98 percent from 94 reviews, Certified Fresh, and all 28 top critics are positive. It was at 100 percent from 75 reviews earlier this week; two critics have since dissented. On Metacritic it scores 95 from 32 critics, and the lowest of them, Slant Magazine, still gave it a 75.

What Possible Love is about

Two marriages from opposite ends of the economy collide over a documentary. Sul Kyung-gu plays Ho-seok, a factory worker who lost his job after a strike went badly and now drinks. Jeon Do-yeon plays Mi-ok, his wife, who is holding the family together. Cho Yeo-jeong plays Ye-ji, a documentary filmmaker who wants to film them, and Zo In-sung plays Sang-woo, her wealthy husband.

The film opens on the Tenth Commandment, "Thou shalt not covet," a nod to Krzysztof Kieślowski's Dekalog, according to reviews in Time Out and the South China Morning Post. Flashbacks to the labor dispute fill in what broke Ho-seok, and Ye-ji's camera is almost always on. Lee wrote the script with Oh Jung-mi, and Jung Jae-il, who composed the Parasite score, wrote the music.

It is also a reunion. Jeon won Best Actress at Cannes for Lee's Secret Sunshine in 2007, and Sul led his Peppermint Candy and Oasis.

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What critics love

Jeon Do-yeon

Review after review singles her out. Time Out's Phil de Semlyen, who gave the film four stars out of five, calls Mi-ok "a fabulous character, played with a mix of deference and teak toughness by Jeon." The Film Stage calls her phenomenal. She is the film's only acting nominee at the Gotham Awards, where Possible Love is also up for Best International Feature and for its screenplay. The winners are named November 30.

Four people in one room

The tension lives between the four leads. "Lee carries the film along on the undercurrents that pass between this quartet," de Semlyen writes, and The Film Stage says the best scenes are the ones where all four share the screen and both danger and eroticism feel possible. Slate's Sam Adams puts it this way: "Lee's stellar quartet of leads give us complicated humans rather than representative figures."

Who gets to tell the story

Underneath is a question several reviews circle: is Ye-ji's interest in a working-class couple sincere, or is it class tourism with a camera? CBC Radio's Radheyan Simonpillai writes that the film "explores the limitations of empathy and flaws in allyship in ways that are intimate, brilliant and moving." TheWrap's Steve Pond notes that Lee "is too savvy and too austere a filmmaker to tip his hand," so you will be deciding for yourself.

Where the pushback is

Almost all of it is about time. The film runs 2 hours and 44 minutes, and its admirers flag that too. Time Out's main reservation is pace: it calls the film a slow burn, quieter than the two Korean films it pairs it with, Parasite and Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice. TheWrap ran its review under the headline "Korean Drama Accumulates Power for Almost Three Hours," which is the praise and the warning in one line.

The pacing requires patience, to be sure, but it's also a strength in a movie that has a lot of issues to explore.Steve Pond, TheWrap

The sharpest reservation comes from The Film Stage, which made it a Critic's Pick and still found it "less allegorical and more didactic than its predecessor," Burning. That review wondered "whether Lee has bitten off a little more than his film has time to chew," and noted that Ye-ji's ever-present camera is played bluntly enough to get laughs.

Audiences are a step behind critics. The Popcornmeter sits at 86 percent from more than 50 ratings: still warm, but 12 points below the Tomatometer.

Should you watch it?

The awards case is strong. Venice's Grand Jury Prize is the festival's runner-up award, and as we reported in September, Possible Love left the Lido with the strongest Oscar case of any film in competition. The Gotham Awards on November 30 are its next test, and the Academy's international shortlist comes after that.

Then go back to Burning

If this is your first Lee Chang-dong film, Burning, his Haruki Murakami adaptation with Steven Yeun, is the next stop. In the US, JustWatch lists it free with ads on Tubi, Pluto TV and The Roku Channel, and on MUBI for subscribers. Netflix has said Burning and Poetry are coming to its US catalog as well, without a date.

Then rank them. Add Possible Love to Shortlist and put it head to head against Burning, Parasite and everything else on your list, two at a time, until you know where it really lands. Our movie tier list guide shows how, and our November streaming guide has what to watch after it.

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