Director, cast on being drawn to the low-key love triangle in Netflix film Pavane

SEOUL – A pavane is a slow, stately dance from the courts of Renaissance Europe.

One would expect a film with that title to involve something grand, perhaps star-crossed nobles or lovers torn apart by war.

Netflix’s upcoming film, premiering on Feb 20, is nothing of the sort. Based on South Korean author Park Min-gyu’s best-selling 2009 novel Pavane For A Dead Princess, it follows three 20-somethings working dead-end jobs in a department store basement who stumble into one another’s lives and, eventually, into love.

It is one of four South Korean films on Netflix’s slate in 2026, and probably the most modest in scope. There is no larger-than-life romance wrought by fate or tragedy here, just ordinary people trying to figure out whether they are even capable of letting someone in.

While major domestic productions jostle for the Chinese New Year holiday window at the multiplexes, Netflix is off doing its own thing, rolling out a small-scale love story to 190 territories at once. It is winning the war from the living room, anyway.

At a Feb 12 production briefing at movie theatre Megabox Coex in Seoul, South Korean director Lee Jong-pil and the three leads talked about what kind of love story they had set out to make.

Lee, who is in his mid-40s and directed comedy-drama film Samjin Company English Class (2020), described it as a story about “three people who don’t believe they’re capable of love, but go on to love anyway”.

He said he had been nursing the idea since his teens, when he scribbled in a diary that “love is what saves humanity, and all films are ultimately romances”.

Go Ah-sung, who worked with Lee on Samjin, plays Mi-jeong, a woman who has shut herself off from the world.

The South Korean actress – who began her career as a child star, notably in The Host (2006) – has played more confident, self-assured women over the years, so this role called for a different kind of courage.

“It wasn’t about the physical transformation,” she said. “I had to dig into the most fragile, loneliest corners of myself. Mi-jeong forced me to face what I’d buried.”

The 33-year-old gained weight for the role and obsessed over the smaller details, deliberately using an incorrect chopstick grip she had as a kid to convey the character’s awkwardness.

South Korean actor Byun Yo-han plays Yo-han, a free-spirited rock music buff who runs on charm and deflection in equal measure. One can spot the character’s energy from a mile away. Byun’s wild, freshly bleached hair makes that clear before he says a word.

The 39-year-old said he read the script twice in one sitting on the night he got it. “It was so special that I was convinced no one but Lee could’ve pulled it off,” he said.

His role sits between the other two characters – part good friend nudging a budding romance along, part third point in the love triangle – and required extensive back and forth with Lee to find the right register.

“He’s hurt, but acts like he isn’t,” Byun said. “He knows things, but pretends not to. Holding all of that together was tricky.”

South Korean actor Moon Sang-min rounds out the trio as Gyeong-rok, a former aspiring dancer now just grinding through life. Pavane is the rising star’s feature film debut, following his breakout in the 2022 historical drama Under The Queen’s Umbrella and his current run on period drama To My Beloved Thief.

The 25-year-old described his character as “a zero – no expression, no emotion, barely any words”. Reading the script felt personal. “The dialogue sounded like my own way of talking,” he said. “That’s when I knew I had to do it.”

Byun also fielded questions about his relationship with Korean-American singer Tiffany Young, 36, from K-pop girl group Girls’ Generation, without missing a beat.

“That’s exactly why you should watch Pavane,” he said. “Giving love, receiving love, what love even is. I want to share that with audiences everywhere.”

“I’ll do my best to live up to it,” he added. THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK