Jeon Do-yeon, the South Korean actor whose performance in Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love has drawn Oscar talk, says the attention is unlikely to change how she works. She made the comments in an interview with Vogue, conducted over Zoom at the end of a long press day in Seoul.
A film selected for the Oscars
According to Vogue, Possible Love is now streaming on Netflix after a theatrical run in October. It was recently chosen as South Korea’s official submission for the 2027 Academy Awards. The film marks Lee’s return after an eight-year break and reunites him with Jeon nearly 20 years after Secret Sunshine, the 2007 drama that made her the first Korean performer to win an acting prize at Cannes. Lee’s Burning (2018) was the first Korean film shortlisted for the best international feature Oscar.
The story
The film follows two married couples from very different social strata. Jeon plays Mi-ok, a pragmatic mask-factory worker who lives with her young son and her husband Ho-seok, played by Sul Kyung-gu. Ho-seok is still haunted by a mass layoff and a violently suppressed labor strike. After a former co-worker’s funeral, the couple meet Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), a documentary filmmaker chronicling laid-off laborers, and her wealthy husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung). Mi-ok agrees to let Ye-ji film their lives. What starts as a story of empathy across class lines becomes stranger and more ambiguous, touching on privilege, hidden desire and voyeurism.
Working with Lee Chang-dong
Jeon said the director had the project in mind for more than ten years, and that she could feel that effort when she read the script. She described Mi-ok as outwardly fragile but strong inside, with an anxiety rooted in a wish to protect what she has.
She explained that Lee asks actors to empty their minds and feel a character rather than express it. Her preparation was mainly to become so familiar with the lines that it felt as though Mi-ok was speaking through her. Lee does not shoot many takes, she said, and he avoids rehearsals and detailed explanations of what he wants from a scene. He prefers to let the chemistry between actors produce something fresh. She and Cho did not discuss their characters beforehand, so as not to spoil that spontaneity.
Jeon, who has worked with Sul more than with any other actor, said their trust helped them convincingly portray a long marriage, even as she discovered new sides of him during the shoot.
Awards and global reach
Asked about the Oscar buzz, which began after the film’s September premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Jeon said she is happy the film is competing but does not expect it to change her or her acting. She recalled wondering after her Cannes win whether it would change her life.
She said she and her colleagues worried during filming that a story so specific to Korea might not translate. Screenings abroad convinced her that the issue of laid-off workers is not unique to Korea. She pointed to the film’s closing image of the moon as something universal.
Source: vogue.com
Image: Republic of Korea / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)