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

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

The latest film by South Korea’s imposingly prolific Hong Sangsoo could almost be called Meet The Parents – not that its humour is nearly as broad as the US farce, though it does have one moment of full-on release. Otherwise, this is a characteristic Hong slow-burner, teasing out its moral comedy at its own gentle, carefully patterned rhythm. Posterity may have to decide where this Berlinale Competition title, Hong’s 33^rd feature, ranks in his overall work. What Does That Nature Say To You may be a touch disappointing for lovers of the director’s wry understatement, as certain themes feel uncharacteristically emphatic and even, in a last-act discussion scene, too explicitly stated. Otherwise, a group of regular Hong players mesh with seemingly effortless grace in a way that is bound to click with fans and with the director’s regular international outlets.

A rare Hong film that feels faintly overstretched

Divided into eight chapters of different lengths – some extremely short – the film begins with a deliberately paced set-up introducing us to a young woman, Junhee (Hong newbie Kang Soyi) and her boyfriend Donghwa (Ha Seongguk). He has driven her from Seoul to the countryside and she invites him to take a look at her parents’ house, which he has never seen before – surprisingly, as it turns out that they have been dating for three years. Donghwa also gets to meet Junhee’s father (Kwon Haehyo) for the very first time – an affable man patently sizing up this potential son-in-law and a little sceptical about his second-hand car.

Donghwa – an aspiring poet and a slackerish contemplative soul in his mid-30s - gets a brief tour of the house’s grounds, and the mountaintop space that Dad has devotedly created in memory of his late mother. Then Donghwa and Junhee set off for lunch and a spot of tourism, together with her older sister Neunghee (Park Miso), recuperating at her parents’ home after a period of depression.

Things drift along inconclusively, as they so often do in Hong films, with several themes and running jokes threaded through – comments about Donghwa’s car, his apparently ‘artistic’ moustache and the fact that he is from a privileged background, his father being a prominent, wealthy attorney with whom Junhee’s family may have had differences.

The threads all converge very enjoyably at the family dinner signalled ahead in the opening shot – a banquet of chicken stew, prepared by Junhee’s mother (Cho Yunhi), also a poet. Here the time-honoured Hong principle of in vino veritas – and, if not vino, then soju or in this case, rice wine makgeolli – once again brings matters to a head.

Though very much an ensemble piece, with the dinner prefaced by a long series of duets and trios, the focus throughout is very much on Donghwa,  while Junhee’s parents offer their concluding commentary in a late scene, one that is a little more explicit about the film’s lessons than we normally expect from Hong.

Shot by the director himself in colour, the film features a number of his signature stylistic touches, including a variation on his famous zooms – this time, zooming out from Donghwa on a hilltop bench, then zooming back in on him and Junhee’s dad, but tighter. The colours are vivid and sometimes glaring, and for much of the time, the digital image is blurry, out of focus to varying degrees. This is a device that startled viewers when Hong used it in 2023’s hour-long In Water, but now it seems to have taken its place in his stylistic arsenal, and here its metaphorical connotations are apparent, as the film is very much about seeing clearly or otherwise (Donghwa’s reading glasses figure prominently).

This is also a rare Hong film that feels faintly overstretched and - given that it essentially ends with a boom-boom punchline – a touch more heavy-handed than Hong’s usual tenor. But performances are spot-on from all concerned, the nuances impeccably calibrated, with Ha Seongguk endearingly sketching out what may be a particularly Korean social type of a would-be literary dork.