'Pavane' Movie Ending Explained & Summary: Is Mi-Jeong Happy?

Netflix’s Pavane is a love story about two people who are not meant to be together. At least according to society. It’s a sweet romance of youth, but one that ultimately leaves you broken. The film tells the story of Gyeong-Rok, Mi-Jeong, and Yo-Han, an unexpected trio that meet at the department store they’re working at. This sparks a joyous romance between Gyeong-Rok and Mi-Jeong, one that Yo-Han pours his heart into because he’s worried it will ultimately fail. The film opens with Gyeong-Rok’s parents, a handsome man and a woman, stealing eyes from across a restaurant, for him to ultimately leave her with a son, while he went off and became an actor, thanks to his looks. Gyeong-Rok may have fallen into the same path, or maybe he’d have learned never to leave a woman thanks to what his dad did. But does he get to? What does Yo-Han do? And do Mi-Jeong and Gyeong-Rok get their happy ending? Let’s find out in the ending of the film.

Spoiler Alert

Gyeong-Rok and Mi-Jeong had been going strong for a little while, even after the entire department store found out that they liked each other. They were together for everything, even setting things up to surprise Yo-Han on his birthday by showing up at the Kentucky pub with a cake. They came close to kissing a couple of times, but somehow, it never quite ended up happening, though they were still happy with each other. They have their first-ever fight after Yo-Han tries to take his own life because he’s lonely, and Gyeong-Rok can’t stand Mi-Jeong crying in public. She’s heartbroken, and it’s only fair that she would cry that her friend thought to do something like that. But it’s almost as if, because she’s considered “ugly,” Gyeong-Rok doesn’t want to draw attention or to be associated with her in that moment. Still, when he apologizes, Mi-Jeong quietly comes back to him. 

However, one night, after they go out with Gyeong-Rok’s friends from dance school, they end up outside Gyeong-Rok’s house, and even though Mi-Jeong tries to invite herself inside, asking to eat ramyeon with Gyeong-Rok, he misses the hint and says he only has cup ramyeon, basically telling her to leave. Right afterwards, she disappears, and it’s not till he gets a letter in the post that he finds out she’s moved away, even though she couldn’t bring herself to say a proper goodbye that night.

Obviously, this leaves the poor guy heartbroken, and after some time, it seems he feels lonely enough to take a break from dance school and come back to work at the department store. But it’s pretty lonely here too, without Mi-Jeong and Yo-Han. He ends up bumping into Se-Ra, the girl who got jealous when he started showing interest in the “ugly” Mi-Jeong, and whom Mi-Jeong ended up chewing out after she made fun of their relationship. This time, he’s hers for the taking, and they head out to a nightclub before ending up spending the night together in a love hotel. The next morning, Gyeong-Rok steps out to see the store, LP, where he’d come with Mi-Jeong on a date ages back, and he takes Se-Ra in to listen to the exact same record he’d played with Mi-Jeong. Predictably, he ends up breaking down and sobbing afterwards, leaving Se-Ra feeling used and miserable too.

Rather than acting out in revenge, Se-Ra uses her influence to get the manager at the department store to give her Mi-Jeong’s address, which she passes on to Gyeong-Rok, perhaps feeling guilty for how she treated the couple back in the day. She definitely violated employee privacy laws by peeking into the personnel files for this, so you know it’s a big favor. Gyeong-Rok ends up writing a heartfelt letter to Mi-Jeong, asking her to meet him at 5 PM on Christmas Eve, and hoping against all odds that she shows up. It’s almost like fate deciding to intervene when his bus breaks down, and he ends up having to run through the snow to get to the bus stop where they were supposed to meet, where he finds out that she was still waiting for him, even late into the evening. 

They end up going out to dinner, and they have a nice time together, and it feels almost like they never separated. The night ends, and neither of them wants it to, but Mi-Jeong reminds Gyeong-Rok that he has to catch the last bus home. He ends up getting on the bus, but then he jumps off and rushes back to her, yelling that he needs to see her again, and they both decide that their next date will be one week from that day, on the 31st of December, at 3 PM, meeting up outside Yo-Han’s favorite pub. They plan a jam-packed day, ending with a concert, and then they finally kiss in the snow before Gyeong-Rok turns around and runs back to the bus. On New Year’s Eve, Mi-Jeong shows up and waits for Gyeong-Rok through the day and through the night, but he never makes an appearance. That doesn’t mean what they had together was a lie; there was love, real love, even if fleeting, and it was important that it happened. 

On the surface, Yo-Han seems like a pretty popular guy, seemingly most comfortable at a nightclub dazzling girls with his charisma. But hiding under all of that is a man not too unlike Gyeong-Rok, except he’s somehow even worse off. Just like Gyeong-Rok is secretly the son of movie star Dong-Cheol, it turns out the rumors about Yo-Han were true all along, and he’s the son of the man who owns Utopia Department Store. As sons of mistresses, both Gyeong-Rok and Yo-Han grew up neglected, and Yo-Han probably started working at Utopia just to feel a little closer to his dad somehow. Clearly, this story is more driven by daddy issues than you’d have expected. According to a story Yo-Han tells the bartender at his favorite pub (though he later claims the story was a lie), he’s a divorcee, though he tried to convince an “ugly” girl to pretend to be his fiancée and go meet his dad one time.

It seems like that girl was none other than Mi-Jeong, and though she turned Yo-Han down, right afterwards, Gyeong-Rok shows up and starts crushing on her. This probably makes Yo-Han feel like a terrible person, since he’d tried to use Mi-Jeong, whereas Gyeong-Rok genuinely respects her as a person and admires her for who she is. In part, though, he’s also a little upset by her “stealing” his friend, and that might feel odd, given how outgoing he is, but none of his connections extend beyond the surface level. We see how much it means to him when Gyeong-Rok and Mi-Jeong bring that cake in on his birthday, and we see how gloomy he gets when he starts seeing less and less of them later. He calls up all his old friends, or the people he thought were his friends, and nobody remembers him. Ultimately, even the bartender at the pub tells him to go home, and he does, but he ends up going on a binge that puts him in the hospital. 

All the talk of his supposed suicide attempt at the employee cafeteria later pushes Mi-Jeong to the point that she smashes a vase on the floor just to shut them up. In the hospital, it initially seems like Yo-Han’s been paralyzed, but he does eventually start to recover. We see a shift in his perspective at this time. Earlier, when he was at his loneliest, he’d started writing a book, the opening words of which were “There is no happy ending. Nevertheless…” A bit nihilistic in his approach, acknowledging that life might be meaningless, but pushing himself to live through it regardless. The book does end up making it big, 5 years down the line, with Yo-Han even going on radio shows to promote it, looking more like his old self. He’s even in a band now, and they all rock out at the old pub in front of an enthusiastic audience. I guess he made all of his dreams come true despite everything. 

Yo-Han’s book is titled “Pavane for a Dead Princess,” borrowing its title from Mi-Jeong’s favorite piece of classical music, a 7-minute composition by Maurice Ravel. The piece’s composition was both driven by and meant to evoke a nostalgia for a slow dance that Ravel imagines a Spanish princess might have danced in centuries gone by, and the book does the same thing. It evokes a nostalgia for a past that never occurred, telling the beautiful love story of Gyeong-Rok and Mi-Jeong, with Gyeong-Rok losing his memories following his bus crashing on that fateful December 24th, only to rediscover Mi-Jeong at a concert where the Pavane was played on the piano. It’s a beautiful story, and in contrast to how Yo-Han had started his original story, it does have a happy ending.

In real life, however, Mi-Jeong was cruelly denied that happy ending. Gyeong-Rok didn’t end up losing his memories in a bus crash; he lost his life, cutting short their blossoming romance. We see that Mi-Jeong no longer works at the department store in the dark, gloomy basement. Instead, she’s moved on to working with kids now, as a music teacher, following her true passion. Her life seems brighter and more purpose-driven, even if she’s lost her lover. In part, that’s because she and Yo-Han still support each other, but also, it’s the promise that Gyeong-Rok is waiting for them too, and they won’t be apart forever. But until that day comes, all she can do is live her life to the fullest and walk around with her head held high and her shoulders thrown back, just like he’d told her to. 

Gyeong-Rok’s dream was to go see the northern lights, and when he found Mi-Jeong, he wanted to do it with her. We can assume she finds her way there eventually, even if it’s alone, because she says Gyeong-Rok was the light in her life, which had always been filled with darkness. For Yo-Han, the darkness took over; that’s why he tried to end it all, but 5 years later, he found it again. Maybe after hearing about the death of his friend, he had a new zeal to live for him.