A midwinter's sunny day

The cast of "Sunny Day" turned Friday's press conference following the press screening of the film at Yongsan CGV into an impromptu variety show, the team's easy rapport spilling off-screen as they shared anecdotes and traded friendly jabs well past the scheduled time.

The film takes this buoyant spirit as its guiding principle -- perhaps its only distinction -- to craft a narrative where life's thornier realities dissolve into perpetual brightness.

The romantic drama treads familiar second-chance romance territory, though it comes nowhere near genre touchstones like "Architecture 101" (2012) or "On Your Wedding Day" (2018) in emotional depth. It follows top actress Seon-hee (Jung Hye-in) as she returns to her coastal hometown of Wando, South Jeolla Province, after a bitter divorce.

There, she reconnects with her first love Dong-pil (Choi Daniel), who has also returned home to process his own trauma after dropping out of law school.

"After my last thriller, I've been drawn to something different," said Choi, marking his return to screen after a seven-year hiatus. "There are plenty of dopamine-rush blockbusters out there. We wanted to offer something gentler."

Gentle to a fault, as it turns out. Just as Seon-hee begins rebuilding her life with support from childhood friends Seok-jin (Han Sang-jin) and his wife Young-sook (Kim Jung-hwa), her estranged husband Sung-ki (Kang Eun-tak) rocks the boat with plans to develop a resort in their seaside community.

The conflicts, dubious even on paper, are further reduced to fairy-tale simplicity — development schemes and emotional wounds alike serve as mere plot devices in a work that steadfastly eludes any semblance of the complexities of the real world.

Jung, taking on her first lead romantic role, found familiar faces among the cast: She and Kang portrayed a divorcing couple in the 2018 drama "Love to the End."

"Having that prior experience helped, especially for such emotionally demanding roles," Jung said.

"Less tears in take two," Kang quipped, drawing laughs from the room.

The film's relentlessly upbeat tone and parade of corny schtick play like a made-for-TV movie, though that seems precisely the point.

"Sometimes you just need a story that feels like a sunny day," director Lee Chang-moo said, who drew on childhood memories in choosing Wando and nearby Cheongsando Island as primary locations. "Those clear skies from my Gwangju vacations stayed with me."

The result is a work that seems content being a simple, feel-good offering that matches its director's vision of being literally like a sunny day.

"Sunny Day" hits theaters Feb. 19.