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.
