The Day After is one of three films that Sang-soo Hong made in 2017. It's in beautiful black-and-white and like most of Sang-soo Hong's films it's about the communication or lack of it between men and women. Bong-wan (Kwan Hae-kyo) has an early breakfast with his wife Hae-joo (Jo Yoon-he) where she questions him about his fidelity and he responds with passive-aggressiveness. As Bong-wan walks to work in the quiet early morning there are flashbacks to his affair with Chang-sook (Kim Sae-byuk) and when he arrives at the publishing house he owns he greets the new employee Areum (Kim Min-hee), who has replaced the departed Chang-sook, and starts right in flirting with her. Then Bong-wan's wife storms in and attacks Areum whom she thinks is Chang-sook. After Hae-joo departs Chang-sook suddenly returns from abroad and Bong-wan fires Areum on her first day there. Areum returns months later for a visit and Bong-wan does not even remember her, shades of Max Ophul's Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948).
The film is a series of two or three people in conversation, with Hong either keeping the camera still or moving it from person to person, depending on who is talking or what they are talking about. Bong-wan, who feels sorry for himself and drinks too much, tries to negotiate with the three women by manipulating them but claims at the end he only cares for his daughter (whom we never see).
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