'Like reading someone's diary': Kim Min-ha, Shim Eun-kyung star in 'The Table: Day and Night'

Director Kim Jong-kwan: 'Even a small clock holds a universe'

Nine years after 'The Table,' the director returns with a film that holds a full season

Actor Kim Min-ha in "The Table: Day and Night" [K-Movie Entertainment]

"They say even a small clock holds a universe. Our film quietly looks in on one moment in a life."

Four conversations scattered across a café table, spanning a single season as summer turns to autumn — that has become director Kim Jong-kwan's signature. Nine years after capturing one café's day in his 2017 film "The Table," Kim is back with a film in the same mold, this time embracing both day and night across an entire season.

Speaking at a press conference Monday at CGV Yongsan IPark Mall in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, Kim said he found meaning in the project with a simple conviction: "Someone has to make films that speak to the beauty of small, ordinary things."

"The Table was a simple film we shot in seven days," Kim said, adding that he had wanted to continue this kind of work as his signature project. "The Table: Day and Night" wrapped filming in 11 showings and took four to five years from conception to release.

Opening Wednesday, the film follows four couples who pass through the same café at different hours. Their stories unspool in turn: Yujin (Kim Min-ha) and Hyono (Ju Jong-hyuk), who visit the café at different times of day; Sangmi (Han Seon-hwa) and Yeongmin (Jang Ryul), who briefly knew each other in middle school; Hyejin (Shim Eun-kyung), a web-novel writer, and Dongnam (Lee Hee-jun), an independent film director; and Nageong (Jeon So-young) and Jongsu (Kim Dong-hwi), a longtime couple on the verge of parting. The English title is "The Table: Day and Night."

Hyejin, the character Shim plays, is a popular web-novel writer — bold and unguarded. Her first encounter with independent director Dongnam is a conversation that moves between suspicion and curiosity. "When I first read the script, I wondered why this role had come to me," Shim said. "It was that much of a challenge." The character was, Shim noted, quite different from her own nature.

Actor Shim Eun-kyung in "The Table: Day and Night" [K-Movie Entertainment]

The performance also brought its own difficulties, rooted in what Shim called the film's "aesthetics of negative space." The film does not lay out its characters' histories in full — actors had to fill in that time using only dialogue and imagination. "It was a character with a tone and manner I had never tried before, and I spent a lot of time thinking about how to express the director's negative space through performance," Shim said.

What helped her find her footing was director Kim's calm presence on set. "There is a strange energy on his set. His composure puts the actors at ease," she said. "I was nervous before the first shoot, but as my mind settled, I found the courage to try." She added that a single word of encouragement from Kim made ideas and improvisation "spring up naturally."

The episodic film brings together Shim Eun-kyung, Lee Hee-jun, Kim Min-ha, Ju Jong-hyuk, Han Seon-hwa, Jang Ryul, Jeon So-young and Kim Dong-hwi, each creating their own distinct color.

Kim said his top priority in casting was finding actors who "enjoy the work," adding that the cast "participated with focus, passion and joy."

In the first episode, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Kim Min-ha plays Yujin, a woman who had a strange dream the night before. Hyono, who dreams of becoming a clockmaker, fills the café by day; Yujin fills it by night. "I have been a longtime fan of director Kim Jong-kwan, so just receiving the script was an honor," Kim Min-ha said. "It felt like reading someone's diary." Kim Min-ha described the appeal as watching scattered, layered stories come together into a single picture.

Yujin's scenes were shot in just two days. "Shooting those two days felt like being in a dream," Kim Min-ha said. "The film has a particular stubborn quietness that introverts carry — the power of whispers and murmurs. I believe that power is strong. That is why our film felt even more beautiful to me."

Before its official release, the film had its world premiere last month as the opening film of the 31st Busan International Film Festival. Kim Min-ha called the selection "dreamlike, like something out of a movie," and said she hoped "more works with diverse voices will continue to emerge." Shim said she had wondered whether such a prominent stage would ever come in her career. "I hope viewers watch our film and reflect on what kind of story their own life is," she said. "I think it will make the world you are living in right now feel somehow different."

shee@heraldcorp.com