Possible Love

Possible Love isn't a tearjerker in the usual sense, and people who go in expecting a big, sweeping weepie are sometimes caught off guard by how quiet it is. Lee Chang-dong spends almost three hours letting a laid-off welder and his wife sit inside their shame, their money worries and their marriage, and the sadness builds slowly rather than hitting all at once. If you're asking "will Possible Love make you cry," the honest answer is that it depends on how close the subject sits to home. Viewers who have watched a parent or partner lose a job, or felt their marriage go quiet under pressure, tend to find it heartbreaking.

Reactions often say the last stretch is where it gets you. Ho-seok, who barely speaks for most of the film, finally lets something out, and critics have called that release "sheer devastation." The closing moonlit scene is the moment many people single out, and even Sul Kyung-gu says he broke down watching it at the Venice premiere. It's more ache than sob, but if you want to know whether Possible Love is sad, yes: it's a gentle, lingering kind of sad that stays with you after the credits.