The death-and-taxes certainty of Hong Sangsoo‘s filmography — comparable to Woody Allen’s prime career run in its regularity, consistency and recurrence of ideas and actors across a gently varying tonal spectrum — has lately been infused with some mild unpredictability. Earlier this year, his Berlinale premiere “The Day She Returns” continued an occasional experimental jag in which story and imagery alike are left out of focus; the forbidding title “Nowhere to Lay My Eyes” might hint at more of the same. Instead, the director’s 35th feature is as classically and welcomingly Hong as it gets: a brief, bittersweet comedy of familial distance and personal drift, crisply and candidly shot, and built around a marvelous performance of quiet, more-than-meets-the-eye feeling by his partner and longtime muse Kim Minhee.
That last asset hasn’t been a given of late: Though the “Handmaiden” star has been exclusively a member of Hong’s company since 2017, she has served a number of Hong’s films in supporting or even off-camera roles. “Nowhere to Lay My Eyes” is Kim’s most rewarding showcase in several years, very much taking its atmospheric cues from her porous, watchful melancholy as a performer, while the presence of other Hong regulars — notably the trusty Kwon Haehyo, again in something of a proxy role for the auteur himself — in the tight ensemble gives the film a comforting gang’s-all-here air, along with a dry seam of humor.
Still, there are strains of deeper sadness and discomfort here, largely in the passive-aggressive tension between Kim’s character and her onscreen mother (superbly played by a new recuit, veteran TV star Choi Myeonggil). The film is slim — just 72 minutes — but it sticks. Following it Locarno competition premiere, “Nowhere to Lay My Eyes” will next play in the main slate of the New York Film Festival alongside “The Day She Returns.” Both will be released in North America by Hong’s regular distributor The Cinema Guild; at this point the director may not be minting that many arthouse converts, but the new film will be warmly embraced by the faithful.
By day, Sanghee (Kim) works for an importer of foreign snack products, but she moonlights as an experimental filmmaker, posting her poetically ruminative shorts on YouTube. This life balance between art and commerce suits her fine, though it’s swiftly picked apart by her mother (Choi), who sees little value in her daughter’s job or her hobby. She could play nicer, considering the two women haven’t seen each other in a decade: Having been mostly raised by her grandparents after her parents’ divorce, Sanghee feels no great kinship with her mom, but hopes a weekend visit to the latter’s new home on the remote, picturesque Jeju Island might rebuild some bridges.
Traveling from Seoul, Sanghee is accompanied by her brother (Shin Seokho), whom her mother treats with markedly more respect. Her mother, meanwhile, is backed up by her second husband (Kwon), a mild-mannered documentary filmmaker whose profession gives his wife yet more ammunition in her smiling disparagement of Sanghee. A restaurant owner who has recently renovated a holiday rental cottage adjoining her property, the older woman has a metric for personal success that doesn’t prioritize personal contentment. Sanghee does have support, however, from her younger stepsister (Park Miso), a shy aspiring artist who admires both her films and her principles; if only Sanghee liked her more.
Over two days of meals, walks and (this being a typical Hong work) slightly excessive drinking, these awkwardly assembled relatives spar softly without (this being a typical Hong work) making much drama of it. The substance here is in the film’s pointed observation of their various coping strategies, blind spots and small, satisfying moments of release. The running conversation between them roves from European furniture quality to opposing modes of documentary practice — Sanghee, like Hong, is prolific and off-the-cuff in her filming, while her stepfather patiently nurtures longterm projects — to, in a rare topical diversion for the filmmaker, the war in Gaza.
Beneath it all, of course, what they’re really talking about is their own respective flavors of loneliness and regret and occasional bliss; “Nowhere to Lay My Eyes” takes interest and even pleasure in all of these, as well as in the throwaway highlights — a great noodle soup, a perfect accidental pratfall — of even the most fraught day. Minhee’s economical performance is beautifully attuned to those alternately profound and superficial concerns, as her face works hard to contain Sanghee’s simultaneous amusement and disappointment at this pleasant, awful weekend, while her sporadic voiceover betrays the more lyrically wounded woman within. That narration is a less usual Hong feature, but a successful one: Even on his most quintessential form, the director can find small, sly ways to surprise us.
