Director Lee Jong-pil and cast talk about their upcoming romantic drama about ordinary people stumbling into love
A pavane is a slow, stately dance from the courts of Renaissance Europe.
You'd expect a film with that title to involve something grand, perhaps star-crossed nobles or lovers torn apart by war.
Netflix's upcoming film is nothing of the sort. Based on Park Min-gyu's bestselling novel "Pavane for a Dead Princess," "Pavane" follows three twentysomethings working dead-end jobs in a department store basement who stumble into each other's lives and, eventually, into love.
It's one of four Korean films on Netflix's slate this year, and probably the most modest in scope. There's no larger-than-life romance wrought by fate or tragedy here, just ordinary people trying to figure out whether they're even capable of letting someone in.
While major domestic productions jostle for the Lunar 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. They're winning the war from the living room, anyway.
At Thursday's production briefing at Megabox Coex in Seoul, director Lee Jong-pil and the three leads talked through what kind of love story they had set out to make.
Lee, who previously directed "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'd 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.
Go has tended to play 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 actor gained weight for the role and obsessed over the smaller details, deliberately using an incorrect chopstick grip she'd had as a kid to convey the character's awkwardness.
Byun Yo-han plays Yo-han — same name by coincidence — a free-spirited rock music buff who runs on charm and deflection in equal measure. You can spot the character's energy from a mile away. Byun's wild, freshly bleached hair makes that clear before he says a word.
Byun said he read the script twice in one sitting the night he got it. "It was so special that I was convinced no one but the director 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 the director 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 really tricky."
Moon Sang-min rounds out the trio as Gyeong-rok, a former aspiring dancer now just grinding through life. It's 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 JTBC's "To My Beloved Thief."
He 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 Tiffany Young of 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.
"Pavane" drops on Netflix Feb. 20.
moonkihoon@heraldcorp.com
![[Exclusive] Ateez to return in November](https://wimg.heraldcorp.com/news/cms/2026/09/02/news-p.v1.20260902.76162fb0ba55493aad1c076f240d0750_R.jpg?type=h&h=120)