Based on the Kyunghyang Shinmun report, Possible Love runs 2 hours 44 minutes, and Lee won the Silver Lion, the Grand Jury Prize, at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival for it. Given the short theatrical run, the Netflix release is the first broad chance for many viewers to see it.

Sul Kyung-gu plays Ho-seok, a laid-off worker, Jeon Do-yeon his wife Mi-ok, Cho Yeo-jeong the documentary director Ye-ji, and Cho In-sung her husband Sang-woo. Lee co-wrote the script with Oh Jeong-mi. The story follows Ye-ji as she approaches the laid-off couple to film them, becomes friends with them, and takes both families to Sang-woo's villa for a summer holiday, where differences in class and background slowly strain the relationships.

A story drawn from the 2009 Ssangyong layoffs

The Kyunghyang Shinmun reported that Lee named the 2009 mass layoffs at Ssangyong Motor as the starting point. He saw them as the first official signal that workers' rights no longer carried weight in Korea, and felt the workers' shared trauma deserved to be told as a labor story.

The idea took shape about ten years ago. Lee reached pre-production and then shelved the project, he said, because he doubted whether he, not having lived it, had the standing to speak for those who had. Co-writer Oh later suggested adding a director who documents the laid-off workers' lives, which Lee said made the story more honest.

No good-versus-evil frame, and mixed reactions

Lee said Ye-ji is a self-critical portrait and not an attack on real documentary makers. He admitted that the dilemma of needing capital to make films is one he feels too, and said the main aim was to convey the lives of laid-off workers and their families. He did not dramatize the ending, and described the film as morally complex rather than a contest between good and evil.

Reactions were not uniform. The Kyunghyang Shinmun said some critics argued that Ye-ji, portrayed as naive and curious, departs from how real chroniclers of labor struggles work. As the director said he was excited to see how viewers at home would respond, how the film reads outside the theater is now up to its audience.