Can friendship survive the class war? South Korea's Oscar pick has an electrifying answer

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Set us as preferred VENICE, Italy — “My actual personality is not very friendly, I’m afraid,” claims Korean actor Jeon Do-yeon.“Myself and actor Sul Kyung-gu, we can be a little bit brusque.

We don’t really have the talent to make the set fun.” As she says it, though, Jeon and co-star Cho Yeo-jeong are laughing — making the assertion rather harder to believe when it arrives in English from Korean via an interpreter.Throughout our conversation, in fact, the pair chuckles, nods along to each other’s answers, interjects sounds of assent.

Enough for me to understand that their chemistry comes naturally, whatever Jeon’s protestations.“In the film I play a character that chases [Jeon’s character] and it really suited me, almost to the point where I didn’t really need to try and act this role,” as Cho puts it.

“I was almost like a sunflower, constantly facing and chasing actor Jeon.”A24’s sweeps-ploitation drama may deflate the TV host’s ego, but it’s so in love with its protagonist it can’t see he’s the least compelling character in the movie.The actors needed every ounce of the sublime chemistry they forged to portray the magnetic but fatally flawed relationship at the heart of auteur Lee Chang-dong’s first film in eight years, “Possible Love,” which premiered Sunday at the Venice Film Festival.South Korea’s international feature submission for the 2027 Oscars, the Netflix film sees Ye-ji (Cho), a documentarian married to a wealthy businessman (Zo In-sung), cozy up to Mi-ok (Jeon), whose husband (Sul) has been seriously injured in a brutal crackdown on striking factory workers, in order to secure an interview with him — only for divisions of class and professional ambition to expose the fault lines in their relationship, and in turn their marriages.“It seems like they want ...