Nowhere To Lay My Eyes Review | Kim Min-hee Drives A Fraught Homecoming In Hong Sang-soo’s Latest Charmer

The South Korean filmmaker, Hong Sang-soo, is often accused by his detractors for being seemingly repetitive. It’s exactly what his aficionados swear by. The apparent repetition in style and techniques subtly breeds fresh angles of insight. He thrives on simple structural tricks which advance a stream of dialogue with deceptively improvised flavour. There’s a clarity of articulation, hinting a constant psychological excavation, mining what the soul hides and represses and seeks.

In his new film, his second this year, Nowhere To Lay My Eyes, he reunites with Kim Min-hee and a troupe of his regular actors. Premiering in international competition at the Locarno Film Festival 2026, this is a drama of soft notes in typical Hong fashion. Through conversation alone, he captivates, compelling us to ponder and examine our own knot of things we keep from one another. A master of the low key, Hong confirms his ceaseless appetite for renewing perspectives on characters, conflicts and dilemmas.

As customary to the filmmaker, his characters don’t give in to wallowing, unless fuelled by soju sessions. The new film circles Sanghee (Kim Min-hee), who returns to her home in Jeju Island to visit her mother (Choi Myeonggil) a decade after their last encounter. There’s not so much bitterness as there’s just blanket lack of familiarity regarding what the other has been doing all these years. Her brother (Shin Seokho) is the one who keeps in touch with the mother. Their parents separated long back. Sanghee’s return turns into an opportunity to interact with her stepfather (Kwon Haehyo) and his daughter (Park Miso).

In an age where every voice seems flattened into mild echoes of each other and authorial originality is under attack, Hong, who writes, edits, produces and scores his films, is an auteur of uncompromising singularity. He’s built a small, contained universe unto himself, which he keeps honing with every new outing. Characters could slip from one film to the next without ruffling folds. His oeuvre is beautifully, magnanimously porous, delicate windows of introspection on life’s myriad guilts, misjudgements and endless hurt. There’s a synchronicity that flows among the films. Their cross currents are intellectual, loose-limbed, an array of riches to cull from. His cinema is limber, wise and expansive, despite a design of humility. The concerns his characters exchange are grounded in the everyday. Yet, the banal feels endlessly intriguing in his weave. There’s an uncommon, always dependable grace and peace curving riverlike beneath the surface. He urges us to take in the replenishing beauty of the world in the things we take for granted. In a latter profoundly moment, Sanghee talks about deriving almost a lifeforce from roadside flowers. They whisper gently, “I accept everything”.

Sanghee’s mother struggles to conceal disappointment in her, even as she covers it up with glib pleasantries. Thanks to Kim Min-hee’s subtly alert performance, we can register just the right subliminal sharp breaths Sanghee must take whenever she’s judged. There’s a significant mother-daughter gulf, neither clued into what the other has been up to. The trip becomes a mutual rediscovery. The daughter learns to appreciate at close quarters the mother’s canny business sense as she herself remarks. The latter discovers to her mildly concealed shock and distaste that Sanghee never actually studied art for which she went abroad. She confesses switching interests, studying film. She does a low-paying job, funnelling her avid interests in making short, experimental films. Her mother is naïve enough to ask whether theatres show them.

Her mother doesn’t even know what Sanghee actually does for a living or have the faintest hint of her passion. Sanghee is visiting her after a decade. A lot has happened in both their lives since. Sanghee compliments the restaurant her mother runs, the pension she built. Beneath the niceties the mother and daughter toss each other, we can gauge tremors of displeasure and disaffection. They are walking on daggers, each disguising the simmering mood with civility. The mother keeps reiterating that she does believe in her to do well. Sanghee’s voiceover threads the film through the few chapters. She wonders how she should address her stepfather, conceding “mister” sounds too odd. Hong is seasoned at knitting on-the-fly chatter to deep, inner unrest, of which he will only share peeks. Sanghee’s mother does grudge her rather unenthusiastic replies, how she kept herself apart all these years. The affection between her mother and her brother is more immediate, accessible, having been more in sync about each other’s lives.

Hong also reverts to self-reflexive discussions on cinema, documentary, riffing on different working methods. Appeals are made for the briefness of a work as well as years of devotion to a single project. The stepfather is a stickler for a work’s long gestation. He has worked on a documentary for ten years. Sanghee goes on a long rant against documentaries that purport to be factual, alleging they are a bigger scam than fictional works. She detests the “brainwashing” in such documentaries, citing both Israel and Palestine producing works pitching their official truths. Instead, she applauds his “obscure, undefined” approach. It’s always tricky to meld conversations on craft and cinematic approach into a film without sounding phony and desperate. Hong pulls it off with characteristic sincerity. The ease with which the banter flows, opinions are held forth, imbues the film with pure liveliness, a contemplative register that knows when to dig deep and when to retreat.

Nowhere To Lay My Eyes turns into a quietly affecting portrait of two artists, the daughter and the stepfather. He basks in the philosophy of his work, trailing a series of probes into love and memory, in a long film production pursuit. It’s just as radical as Sanghee’s artistic impulse, who admits not being sure of what she’s going to shoot while attempting something. She needs to search it out for “things that are beautiful turn up at any given moment”. All we have to do is just be open, permeable to wonder and life’s capacity for glorious bewilderment. This film is a beguiling invitation.