NOWHERE TO LAY MY EYES (NYFF 2026) – Review by Margaret Barton-Fumo
As he has been known to do for the past several years, the South Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo has returned to this year’s New York Film Festival with two features in the Main Slate. One is Nowhere to Lay My Eyes, which stars Hong’s muse Kim Min-hee alongside Shin Seok-ho as sister and brother Sanghee and Sangwon. Traveling from Seoul, the siblings go on a trip to visit their mother (Choi Myung-gil) on Jeju Island, where she lives with her partner (Hong regular Kwon Hae-hyo), a mild-mannered documentary filmmaker.
Sanghee is also a director, of experimental films. She makes a living working for a company that sells snacks, while filming short works on the side. She doesn’t make much money, and makes films for her own self-fulfillment, always carrying a small HD camera. Her mother, on the other hand, boasts that “my cash keeps piling up in my sleep,” while Sanghee’s brother Sangwon is a successful facility manager at a large company. The relationship between mother and daughter is strained, while son Sangwon maintains a friendly, even keel. The mother applies more pressure to Sanghee, repeatedly trying to convince her to move in and eventually take over the family restaurant. Conflict is present in the film, but always quietly rolls over as the siblings expertly defer their mother’s invasive suggestions.
The specter of their philandering father hovers in the background, while their mother’s current partner and stepdaughter provide a lightly humorous, odd addition to the family. The stepdaughter (Park Mi-so) is a painter who creates her own versions of reproductions, in contrast with Sanghee, who follows her intuition to create novel works. At the end of the film we get to view one of her short productions, “The Flower,” and gain some insight into her creative mind. Kim Min-hee’s portrayal of Sanghee is thoughtful and delicate, effectively aided by Hong’s non-intrusive direction. There is a lot of eating and drinking, as is par for the course in Hong’s films. Nowhere to Lay My Eyes unfolds at a comfortable pace, punctuated by nuanced, often illuminating conversations. Small musings can lead to revelations over the course of mere minutes, usually aided by glasses of Soju. Devoteés of Hong’s cinema tend to revel in these familiar beats, and here Nowhere to Lay My Eyes pleasingly delivers.
Hong has included director characters in many of his films, but Kim Min-hee’s portrayal of Sanghee differs from the previous male-occupied roles. As the actress explained at the press conference for the film at Locarno, Sanghee may be a filmmaker, but she does not actually direct. Her work is very impressionistic, always incorporating nature and her physical surroundings. Highly introspective while also attentive to others, Kim as Sanghee brings a quiet sensitivity to Nowhere to Lay My Eyes that is entirely her own. Years of close collaboration between Hong and Kim have served them well, and this latest film develops beautifully, not unlike a budding flower, in keeping with Sanghee’s own film-within-a-film.
