Areum looks forward to her first day of work at a small publishing house. Until recently, her boss Bongwan was in a relationship with the girl Areum is replacing. Like every other day, Bongwan leaves home early, and on the way to work he thinks constantly of the love he has lost. But today his wife finds a love letter he wrote and she heads to the publishing house. There she mistakes Areum for the woman who was having an affair with her husband. Hong Sang-soo had two films this year at Cannes: while the Special Screening of Claire’s Camera (La caméra de Claire) with Isabelle Huppert is in color, the competition film The Day After is black-and-white. This low-key drama of love, separation, jealousy, and disappointment recalls another of the director’s key traits: locating the film at a book publisher’s and in a restaurant where the characters engage in long conversations, a plot involving mix-ups and misunderstandings, and, especially, the blending of irony and melancholy – all are reminiscent of Éric Rohmer.