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‘What Does that Nature Say to You’ Review: Hong Sangsoo Takes a Blurry Lens to Early Adulthood
A poet enters the arena of a family gathering in Hong Sangsoo's 'What Does that Nature Say to You,' a film that takes surprising visual form.
Shot on notably lo-fi, blurry video, the story begins with struggling thirty-something poet Donghwa (Ha Seongguk) dropping his girlfriend Junhee (Kang Soyi) off at her parents’ suburban hillside home, only to discover that it’s much fancier and more sprawling than he’d assumed, or been led to believe. Surviving as a poet is a devil’s bargain, and Donghwa even makes a show of driving a used car, but Hong also seems to intentionally model the character as a younger, aspirational, perhaps even naïve version of the elderly philosopher-bard Uiju (Ki Joobong) from his recent drama “In Our Day,” down to his distinct goatee. Hong usually shoots his characters with something of an objective, omniscient perspective, and while this appears to be the case at first here, the film’s soft-focus aesthetic — which might cause viewers to squint on occasion as they parse the ongoing drama — is soon revealed to be rooted in a specific point of view, despite the physical remove of the camera’s placement.
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