Review: Two couples run headlong into the limits of empathy in the masterful 'Possible Love'

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Set us as preferred The brilliant Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong is a suffering protagonist’s best friend, exploring the buried pain in people like no other filmmaker.But he’s never been so delicately novelistic, and so accessibly human, as with his latest movie, “Possible Love,” even when Lee is spinning the enigmatic vibes he’s known for.A marriage story weighty enough to bear two fascinatingly complex couples, it explores a web of isolation and desire knotted with the divisions and woes of society today: class, labor, media.

The film fairly vibrates with ominous tension even in scenes in which seemingly nothing happens.(Which, admittedly, is a Lee staple if you remember his last film, 2018’s eerie psychological thriller “Burning.”) Astonishingly acted, intricately written, with nary a shot out of place and never insulting to its audience, “Possible Love” is a masterpiece of everyday struggle — essentially, who bears it and who doesn’t — and easily among the year’s best films.At the funeral for a colleague who committed suicide in the wake of a disastrous labor strike, out-of-work Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu, of Lee’s “Peppermint Candy”) would rather brood in the car alone and let his patient, grasping-for-connection wife Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon, a Cannes prize-winner for her turn in Lee’s “Secret Sunshine”) be around others.

With these blue collar parents’ grade-school-age son a tangibly quiet presence, a seemingly impassable unhappiness oozes from the opening scenes.The appearance inside the funeral home, however, of a documentary crew interviewing laid-off workers spurs Mi-ok to engage with the outgoing director, Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), whose reserved, well-to-do husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung) is in tow.

When Mi-ok agrees to participate in Ye-ji’s film, a friendship forms.Entertainment ...