Playing an aspiring filmmaker spending an awkward weekend with her estranged mother, the Korean star's richly expressive minimalism fills all the blanks in her director-partner's typically lean screenplay.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
@guylodge See All
©Jeonwonsa Film Co 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.
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