The streamer is pushing Jeon Do-yeon for Best Actress and chasing Best Picture, Director and Screenplay nods for Lee's first film in eight years, The Hollywood Reporter says.
Seven years after Parasite broke the Oscar's language barrier, Netflix thinks it has another Korean film that can do it again. The Hollywood Reporter says the streamer is building a multi-category Academy Awards campaign around Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love, the director's first feature in eight years.
The numbers behind the push are hard to ignore. Possible Love won the Grand Jury Prize at Venice, placed second for the Toronto International Film Festival's international audience award, and currently sits at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 93 on Metacritic. Korea picked it as its official submission for Best International Feature back in August.
But THR reports Netflix isn't stopping at that category. Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, the last shared between Lee and Oh Jung-mi, are listed as high-priority targets, and the outlet notes the Academy's expanded international membership over the past decade has made non-English-language runs in those races far less of a long shot than they used to be.
The real centrepiece, though, is Jeon Do-yeon. She plays Mi-ok, one half of a working-class couple who gets pulled into an uneasy friendship with a far wealthier pair, and Netflix is reportedly lobbying hard to land her a Best Actress nomination. Jeon and Lee go back to 2007's Secret Sunshine, which made her the first Korean actor to win Best Actress at Cannes. She's since become one of the country's biggest stars.
What's notable, per THR, is the way Netflix is splitting up the rest of the cast. Unlike its other big non-English-language title this year, La Bola Negra, where the whole ensemble is being pushed in supporting categories, Possible Love's four leads are each being slotted into a different race. Sul Kyung-Gu, who plays Mi-ok's husband Ho-seok, is going up for Best Actor. Parasite alum Cho Yeo-jeong, who plays a documentarian named Ye-ji, is in the Best Supporting Actress conversation. Her onscreen husband Sang-woo, played by Zo In-sung, is being pushed for Best Supporting Actor.
Netflix is also eyeing the Actor Awards, formerly the SAG Awards, hoping for an ensemble nomination the way Parasite got one en route to its historic win in that category. The film has also been submitted to the Golden Globes in the drama categories rather than musical or comedy, which THR points out could work in Jeon's favour, since two of the year's biggest Best Actress contenders, The Debut's Julianne Moore and Obsession's Inde Navarrette, are both competing in the Globes' musical/comedy field instead, leaving the drama race comparatively open.
Nominations season doesn't properly kick off for another few months, but the shape of Netflix's bet is already clear. It isn't just trying to repeat Parasite's international feature win. It wants Possible Love, and Jeon Do-yeon specifically, inside the main categories where voters usually keep subtitles out.
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