‘What Does That Nature Say To You’ review: Long chats and fast zooms with Hong Sangsoo

Dir. Hong Sangsoo. South Korea 2025. 108 minutes. 

The most recent movie by South Korea’s imposingly prolific Hong Sangsoo might virtually be referred to as Meet The Dad and mom – not that its humour is almost as broad because the US farce, although it does have one second of full-on launch. In any other case, it is a attribute Hong slow-burner, teasing out its ethical comedy at its personal mild, fastidiously patterned rhythm. Posterity could must resolve the place this Berlinale Competitors title, Hong’s 33^rd function, ranks in his general work. What Does That Nature Say To You could also be a contact disappointing for lovers of the director’s wry understatement, as sure themes really feel uncharacteristically emphatic and even, in a last-act dialogue scene, too explicitly said. In any other case, a gaggle of standard Hong gamers mesh with seemingly easy grace in a manner that’s sure to click on with followers and with the director’s common worldwide shops.

A uncommon Hong movie that feels faintly overstretched

Divided into eight chapters of various lengths – some extraordinarily quick – the movie begins with a intentionally paced set-up introducing us to a younger lady, Junhee (Hong beginner Kang Soyi) and her boyfriend Donghwa (Ha Seongguk). He has pushed her from Seoul to the countryside and she or he invitations him to try her dad and mom’ home, which he has by no means seen earlier than – surprisingly, because it seems that they’ve been courting for 3 years. Donghwa additionally will get to satisfy Junhee’s father (Kwon Haehyo) for the very first time – an affable man patently sizing up this potential son-in-law and a bit sceptical about his second-hand automobile.

Donghwa – an aspiring poet and a slackerish contemplative soul in his mid-30s – will get a quick tour of the home’s grounds, and the mountaintop house that Dad has devotedly created in reminiscence of his late mom. Then Donghwa and Junhee set off for lunch and a spot of tourism, collectively together with her older sister Neunghee (Park Miso), recuperating at her dad and mom’ house after a interval of melancholy.

Issues drift alongside inconclusively, as they so typically do in Hong movies, with a number of themes and operating jokes threaded via – feedback about Donghwa’s automobile, his apparently ‘inventive’ moustache and the truth that he’s from a privileged background, his father being a outstanding, rich lawyer with whom Junhee’s household could have had variations.

The threads all converge very enjoyably on the household dinner signalled forward within the opening shot – a banquet of hen stew, ready by Junhee’s mom (Cho Yunhi), additionally a poet. Right here the time-honoured Hong precept of in vino veritas – and, if not vino, then soju or on this case, rice wine makgeolli – as soon as once more brings issues to a head.

Although very a lot an ensemble piece, with the dinner prefaced by a protracted collection of duets and trios, the main focus all through may be very a lot on Donghwa,  whereas Junhee’s dad and mom provide their concluding commentary in a late scene, one which is a bit more express concerning the movie’s classes than we usually count on from Hong.

Shot by the director himself in color, the movie options various his signature stylistic touches, together with a variation on his well-known zooms – this time, zooming out from Donghwa on a hilltop bench, then zooming again in on him and Junhee’s dad, however tighter. The colors are vivid and generally obvious, and for a lot of the time, the digital picture is blurry, out of focus to various levels. It is a machine that startled viewers when Hong used it in 2023’s hour-long In Water, however now it appears to have taken its place in his stylistic arsenal, and right here its metaphorical connotations are obvious, because the movie may be very a lot about seeing clearly or in any other case (Donghwa’s studying glasses determine prominently).

That is additionally a uncommon Hong movie that feels faintly overstretched and – on condition that it primarily ends with a boom-boom punchline – a contact extra heavy-handed than Hong’s typical tenor. However performances are spot-on from all involved, the nuances impeccably calibrated, with Ha Seongguk endearingly sketching out what could also be a very Korean social sort of a would-be literary dork.