I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again many times in the coming years: it’s not the New York Film Festival unless Hong Sang-soo is there with at least one film, preferably two. The prolific South Korean auteur has been a mainstay of the festival’s Main Slate since his fourth feature film, On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate, was selected for NYFF40 in 2002. Sixteen of his films have played here over the past twenty-four years, including his two most recent works, Nowhere to Lay My Eyes and The Day She Returns; both are solid additions to the ever-expanding Hong oeuvre, dealing with familiar themes that have preoccupied him throughout his career while still feeling fresh and engaging.
Nowhere to Lay My Eyes
Winner of Best Director and Best Performance at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, Nowhere to Lay My Eyes stars Hong’s longtime partner and muse, Kim Min-hee, as a filmmaker visiting her mother for the first time in a decade and focuses on the awkwardness that ensues between these two very different but equally determined women. Somewhat of a companion piece to last year’s What Does That Nature Say to You, which also portrayed a deliciously uncomfortable family get-together, Nowhere to Lay My Eyes revels in the friction that arises from the clash in perspectives between different generations of the same family, particularly when it comes to what they value most in life.
Sang-hee (Kim) accompanies her younger brother (Shin Seok-ho) to Jeju Island to visit their mother (Choi Myung-gil, a newcomer to Hong’s unofficial stock company) and stepfather (Kwon Hae-hyo, possibly the most recognizable member of said stock company). While her brother has visited recently, Sang-hee hasn’t seen her mother in a long time, the reasons for which become clear as soon as they speak to each other again. Mother is a driven businesswoman who has run multiple successful restaurants, the latest here on Jeju Island; Sang-hee is an experimental filmmaker who works for a company that imports foreign snacks to make enough money to get by. She doesn’t love the job, but she does love having enough free time to make films, and that’s what’s most important to her.
Sang-hee’s mother doesn’t have much respect for what Sang-hee does with her life, especially the way she prioritizes making art over making money; she repeatedly encourages her daughter to move to Jeju Island and run the lavishly appointed guest house she has built, remarking that Sang-hee doesn’t need to live in Seoul to make the short films that she uploads to YouTube. What’s ironic is that Sang-hee’s stepfather is also a filmmaker, one who spends upwards of a decade shooting each of his documentaries, the latest of which focuses on the funeral practice of “grass tombs.” Not only that, his daughter (Park Mi-so) has moved back home after a divorce and devoted herself to painting; her stepmother has even built her a lovely studio in which to work. So why is it okay for these two to pursue their somewhat unrealistic artistic dreams, while Sang-hee’s are only spoken of with passive-aggressive derision?
Essentially a one-man production company at this point in his career, Hong not only writes and directs his movies, but also produces, shoots, edits, and scores them. The musical score in this one particularly stands out; normally Hong’s scores are rather lo-fi and take a back seat to the images, but in Nowhere to Lay My Eyes, the music is much more abrasive and in your face, full of shrieking and twanging that only adds to the undercurrent of tension that runs throughout the film. Indeed, it manages to make even the most seemingly calm moments feel stressful: fitting, since you can tell that is how they also feel for Sang-hee. It’s not just the musical score that feels oppressive; the overall sound of the film is rather overwhelming, with the wind off the coast of Jeju Island pounding so hard into the microphones that it sometimes almost drowns out the dialogue.
Kim, who has such a charismatic screen presence that the simple act of eating ramyeon feels cinematic when she’s the one doing it, narrates the film in voice-over, describing the things Sang-hee sees and how they make her feel. Her filmmaking style is similarly sensitive and observant, revealed in a striking sequence late in the film when her family watches one of her shorts on YouTube. Hong shows us them watching the film first; we only hear Sang-hee’s narration coming out of the laptop. The film is then immediately played again, and this time we see the images, filmed by Sang-hee on the ever-present camcorder that she carries in a bag at her side, ready whenever inspiration happens to strike. Watching the film, her mother sits, rapt, finally seeing the world through Sang-hee’s eyes for the first time. Does this mean she finally understands the daughter who is so different from her that they may as well be unrelated? Perhaps not, but at least she can no longer utterly dismiss her.
Nowhere to Lay My Eyes is an insightful depiction of the awkward, anxious dance that family members engage in when they have very little in common. With little of import to say to each other, they allow empty compliments and polite niceties to pile up and fill in the chasm that looms between them. But no solid connections can be built on such shaky ground, only temporary bridges guaranteed to tumble down at the first sign of trouble.
The Day She Returns
The Day She Returns stars Hong regular Song Seon-mi as Jeong-su, a middle-aged actress who stepped away from the profession more than a decade ago to start a family. Now divorced with an eleven-year-old daughter, she’s making her big comeback in an independent film and doing a series of press interviews to promote it. The three interviewers are all young women, and while they have varying opinions on the film, they all conclude their time with Jeong-su with the same: what is your advice for the younger generation?
The film is divided into five chapters, with the first three chapters devoted to the three interviews. These are shot as very long takes with very few, if any, cuts; the camera in each one is set at the same angle, focused on Jeong-su’s face, with the interviewers largely only seen over the shoulder. These interviews are fascinating, providing a keen glimpse behind-the-scenes at film journalism that is all the more entertaining if you’re in it yourself. (The press screening audience couldn’t resist laughing with recognition when Jeong-su called one of her interviewers to demand that she not only leave out certain quotes, but allow Jeong-su to review the final piece before it was published.) They also provide a glimpse into the complicated character of Jeong-su: someone who is clearly insecure on the verge of her comeback, and afraid of how people will view her now after so many years away.
The way Jeong-su’s responses to the interviewers’ questions change depending on her mood for that particular interview is enlightening, as is the way some responses remain relatively the same. (These include the aforementioned advice for the younger generation, which forms a veritable refrain throughout the film.) She seems desperate for companionship; the interviews are held before opening hours in a German restaurant where Jeong-su knows the owners, and she attempts to get each interviewer to join her for a beer, transforming professional encounters into personal conversations (though, again, that doesn’t stop her from taking advantage of the camaraderie formed to exert control over the published content of the interviews).
The latter part of the film takes place at an acting class, where Jeong-su is asked to revisit the interviews by writing a script based on them that she will then perform. Naturally, she remembers things differently than they actually occurred. The resulting script cobbles various moments from different interviews into a scene that reflects not what happened, but how Jeong-su believes it happened, or how she wishes it had; it’s a chance for her to do her own rewriting, without needing the approval of the interviewers or anyone else.
As the scene progresses, it grows more and more excruciating to watch unfold, particularly once Jeong-su arrives at that ever-present final question: what is your advice for the younger generation? Jeong-su keeps stopping to refer to the script, though it’s unclear whether she is reciting the lines she wrote, unable to remember them because they are different from what she actually said, or reading her words, disliking them, and improvising new ones.
The Day She Returns is one of Hong’s most minimalist films, shot in very few takes, with very few actors and only two main sets. But it’s so much more than a mere formal exercise; it’s also an astute exploration of the vagaries of memory and how they affect the way we see ourselves, not to mention the way we represent ourselves to others. And, like On the Beach at Night Alone was for Kim Min-hee and In Front of Your Face was for Lee Hye-young, The Day She Returns is an incredible showcase for an actress playing an actress, this time Song Seon-mi. Her performance is a multi-layered marvel; your impression of who Jeong-su really is constantly evolves as certain aspects of her character recede into the darkness and others emerge into the light.
Nowhere to Lay My Eyes and The Day She Returns are screening in the Main Slate at the 64th New York Film Festival, which runs from September 25 to October 12, 2026.
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