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Possible Love
(Ganeunghan Sarang,
가능한 사랑)

Possible Love (L to R) Jeon Do-yeon as Mi-ok, Sul Kyung-gu as Ho-seok, Cho Yeo-jeong as Ye-ji in Possible Love Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026

Possible Love (Ganeunghan Sarang, 가능한 사랑)

Director – Lee Chang Dong – 2026 – South Korea – Cert. 15 tbc – 164m

*****

A filmmaker working on a documentary about workers who’ve been laid off from their companies invites a worker’s wife and her husband to stay at her and her husband’s lavish coastal home – plays the London Film Festival (LFF) Sunday, 11th, Wednesday 14th, Sunday 18th October, then out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 23rd, the London Korean Film Festival on Tuesday, 3rd November, and is on Netflix from Friday, November 6th

The family of laid-off manual worker Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu from A Normal Family, Hur Jin-ho, 2023; Memoir of a Murderer, Won Shin-yeon, 2017; Peppermint Candy, Lee Chang Dong, 1999), his wife Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon from Beasts Clawing at Straws, Kim Yong-hoon, 2020; The Housemaid, Im Sang-soo, 2010) and their young son Cheol (Ha Lim) attend the funeral of one of Ho-seok’s fellow laid-off workmates. The reticent Ho-seok plans to stay in the car, but then goes in to the ceremony some time after the rest of his family and stays for the wake where, against what he’s promised his wife, he drinks, and as he starts to lose it, the pair get into an argument in public.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Ice Tower
(La Tour de Glace)

The Ice Tower (La Tour de Glace)

Director – Lucile Hadzihalilovic – 2025 – France, Germany, Italy – Cert. 15 – 117m

*****

Midwinter. A homeless girl stumbles onto a film set where a notoriously difficult actress is shooting an adaptation of The Snow Queen – screens exclusively on BFI Player from Monday, January 12th

Opening with microscopic images of of snowflakes and more abstract visuals of refracted light, this swiftly delivers a female voiceover (by Aurélia Petit from Saint Omer, Alice Diop, 2022; By the Grace of God, François Ozon, 2018; Happy End, Michael Haneke, 2017; Personal Shopper, Olivier Assayas, 2016; The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry, 2006) in French with English subtitles for those of us in the UK, in which the word ‘neige’ (snow) is seemingly, endlessly repeated. Then images of a girl wandering snow covered mountainsides gives way to night time small town streets before Jeanne (newcomer Clara Pacini) is told off for arriving late at the supper table. “I was afraid you’d gone”, says one of the younger girls (Cassandre Louis Urbain).

At night, Jeanne surreptitiously reads a postcard from a friend picturing Alpenaille skating rink addressed to her at the Bon Secours (Good Rescue) Foster Home.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Piano Teacher
(La Pianiste)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2001 – Austria, France – Cert. 18 – 131m

*****

A masochistic piano teacher with an abusive mother embarks on an affair with a young male student – the opening film of Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Friday, June 6th and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025

Warning: NSFW.

This is at once representative of Haneke’s wider body of work and very different from it.

Representative because he is one of those directors whose personal use of cinematic vocabulary has been so honed over his years of making movies that he is able to clearly and precisely articulate problematic, controversial and taboo ideas and subject matter that few directors would be able to handle without descending into exploitation or commercialism. He is a director steeped in cinema, fascinated by how the process of making a movie constructs the narrative or other viewing and listening experience, and how that is perceived and understood by audiences.

Different because although Haneke generally writes as well and directs his own films, they are mostly original pieces whereas this one is an adaptation of a book, The Piano Teacher / Die Klavierspielerin by Elfriede Jelinek.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Pickpocket

Director – Robert Bresson – 1959 – France – Cert. PG – 76m

*****

Why is a man compelled to pursue acts of petty thievery – acclaimed, arresting, existential drama is out in cinemas on Friday, June 3rd

I have just rewatched Bresson’s classic and am still not entirely sure I have its measure. Perhaps that’s the thing about great works of art. Oh, to have seen it on its original release, had I been old enough, and watch it without the baggage of it being proclaimed a cinematic masterwork.

Words on the screen proclaim at the outset that this is not the thriller its title might suggest; it’s rather a study of a man who repeatedly commits crimes which is trying to understand why he would do that.

The characters, of whom the main protagonist Michel (Martin LaSalle) is the one who gets most screen time and indeed, is scarcely if ever off the scree, are played deadpan, with Bresson doing his utmost to ensure that his cast perform the roles without acting. He doesn’t want the actors’ craft to come between us and his images of people doing, being, talking. He seeks to avoid the artificiality of acting thereby allowing his performers to realise his images without any acting technique mediating them.… Read the rest