Acclaimed South Korean director Lee Chang-dong returned to the Venice Film Festival after 24 years on Sunday evening, and the Sala Grande gave his sweeping romantic drama Possible Love a six-minute standing ovation. [1] Deadline's stopwatch ran longer — six and a half minutes — with applause it called enthusiastic, cut short by festival staff who had to usher the director and cast out of the hall to prepare for the next premiere. [2] Stars Sul Kyung-gu, Jeon Do-yeon, Zo In-sung, and Cho Yeo-jeong were emotional throughout the clapping, wiping away tears. [2] Saturday's file printed the eight-year shelf and the camera that accuses itself. Sunday prints the room answering with tears — and the festival answering the tears with a hook.
Possible Love is Lee's first film since 2018's Burning, co-written with Oh Jung-mi, following the intertwined lives of two married couples: a laid-off factory worker and his family, and the ultra-wealthy household of the documentarian filming them. [1] The layoff film he would not shoot until the camera could be written in as a suspect has become the comeback film he could not keep inside the schedule. Venice will still file the return. The invoice, as this paper printed Saturday, is a layoff he treated as an ethical question that could halt production — and a cast crying through the minutes that question earned.
Saturday's file is the necessary companion because it explains why the tears matter. Lee wrote the layoff pages after a conglomerate's mass firings, an all-or-nothing strike, and a state crackdown — then shelved them, asking whether he was worthy of turning other people's labor pain into drama, and finding no clear answer. Documentaries had already filmed the events. The unlock was co-writer Oh, a Burning collaborator, who added the documentarian character — permission, in effect, to put the accusation inside the frame. The cast's loyalty tells the same story from the other side: Sul Kyung-gu begged another director to release him without even reading the script, because the delay was the director's conscience, not the market's indifference. None of that is in Sunday's ceremony. All of it is why the ceremony happened.
Six versus six-and-a-half is the industry's unit of account failing at arithmetic. Two outlets, one room, one ovation, two timings a half-minute apart — and both agree on the only detail with narrative content: the applause ended because staff ended it, not because the room was done. [1][2] An ovation timed by ushers is still the currency of the Lido. This one ran long enough to need cutting, which is the closest the currency comes to a compliment.
A director who once promised the next film would not take as long — and broke the promise by the better part of a decade — has now watched professionals with mops and schedules decide his vindication had run its allotted minutes. There is a neatness to it that Lee himself might appreciate: the man who asked whether cameras consume their subjects had his own celebration consumed by the program. The film runs just short of three hours. The applause ran six minutes, or six and a half. The shelf ran eight years. Only the last number was his choice.
Six versus six-and-a-half is the industry's unit of account failing at arithmetic. Two outlets, one room, one ovation, two timings a half-minute apart — and both agree on the only detail with narrative content: the applause ended because staff ended it, not because the room was done. [1][2] An ovation timed by ushers is still the currency of the Lido. This one ran long enough to need cutting, which is the closest the currency comes to a compliment.
Saturday's file recorded the release plan — cinemas October 23, streamer November 6. Between them sits a director who blamed his own pathological timidity for the wait and has now watched a room stand for six of the minutes he withheld for eight years. The shelf is over. The camera has been accused. The tears are on the record.
-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles