‘The Table: Day And Night’ review: Busan opener set in Korean coffee shop relies heavily on its performances

Dir: Kim Jong-kwan. South Korea. 2026. 80mins

A chic neighbourhood café bears witness to the various romantic trials and tribulations of four couples in Kim Jong-kwan’s The Table: Day And Night, making its world premiere as Busan’s opening film. A companion piece more than a standard sequel to 2016’s The Table, which opened the festival a decade ago, it’s simultaneously more ambitious than the first film, and less substantial.

Simultaneously more ambitious than ‘The Table’ and less substantial

Ever since Kim’s breakout short film How To Operate A Polaroid Camera (2004), the filmmaker has made a name for himself as one of the Korean industry’s foremost anthologists. In the years since, he’s finessed his storytelling skills by contributing to omnibus features (such as 2024 crime thriller anthology The Killers or 2006’s One Shining Day), or writing films that pivot structurally on chapters or segments like Frosted Window (2025) and Worst Woman (2016). His now recognizable brand of storytelling, together with a star-studded cast that includes Kim Min-ha (Apple TV’s Pachinko), Shim Eun-kyung (recent hit The Assassin(s), Two Seasons, Two Strangers) and Lee Hee-jun (The Man Standing Next), may see The Table: Day And Night play further festivals and receive a modest release in Asia. Broader exposure is less certain.

In addition to changing locations and finding new staff for the central café, here Kim jettisons the linear structure that underpinned the conceit of the first film: one coffee house, one table, four couples’ conversations. In The Table: Day And Night, the visiting couples (who, it must be said, never seem to drink any coffee) come in over the space of several weeks as summer turns to autumn, and step outside the boundaries of love and romance in their talking points. Kim, who also wrote the screenplay, does not make much of an attempt to reinvent the wheel or drill down into the issues confronting most contemporary relationships. The film is fairly conservative and traditional in its pairings, although it does feature a deaf woman and an LGBTQ+ waiter.

To hammer home the episodic structure, Kim’s also given each couple’s chat a chapter title. In ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, watchmaker Hyeon-oh (Joo Jong-hyuk) and Yoo-jin (Kim Min-ha), a flaky woman with a broken antique watch, meet and sort of flirt. ‘Still Ourselves’ sees Young-min (Chang Ryul) find himself the target of unwanted attention from unstable, conspiracy-minded old school friend Sang-mi (Han Sun-hwa). In ‘TPA’, successful writer Hye-jin (Shim) reconnects with another old school friend, Dong-nam (Lee), now a budding filmmaker who wants to adapt one of her web novels into a film. And final segment ‘Autumn Story’ sees budding K-pop singer Na-kyung (emerging star Jeon So-young) and Jong-su (Kim Dong-hwi) reminiscing about their middle school romance.

Few films can leap the bar set by Louis Malle in his single room, two-hander conversational classic My Dinner With André, and Kim certainly doesn’t hit those lofty heights here. But, to his credit Kim makes up the difference with a quartet of relatively complex, engaging female characters that could easily stand on their own. Leading the pack is Shim, making Hye-jin by turns suspicious, disinterested, very interested and cautious without ever making her an elitist snob. A close second is Han, one of Korea’s brightest comedic talents, who, in a few short scenes, sparks the otherwise staid and humourless proceedings to life.

But there’s a clumsy, unwelcome meta moment when the space is repositioned as Dong-nam’s film set, which pulls attention away from the eight lovers and puts it squarely on Kim’s clever script. Until those closing minutes, however, the café itself adds much needed texture to the encounters, and is smoothly shot by Kim’s regular cinematographer Kim Ji-yong (along with newcomer Lee Ju-yeon) — who helped define the Korean Wave in Kim Jee-woon’s A Bittersweet Life and later lensed Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave.