What Does That Nature Say to You

Official Selection, 2025 Berlin International Film Festival
Official Selection, 2025 New York Film Festival

When your girlfriend’s father says to you, “Wow, your mustache is really pretty,” that’s good right? Especially if he goes on about it, explaining how he could never grow one “so pretty?” He’s being vulnerable, in a sense saying you’ve surpassed him. Maybe he’s the father you’ve always wanted. Are you his dream son?

Hong Sang-soo’s latest uses a Meet the Parents rom-com setup to reveal the fantasies and projections we put on our lovers and families. When poet Dongwha visits his longtime girlfriend’s home, built on a mountain dedicated to her grandmother, he meets her soulful father, her mother (also a poet), and her wise if unstable sister. In turn, they meet a young man who, they increasingly intuit, might have more sincerity than depth.

Continuing a series of films that consider intergenerational encounters, WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU is as generous as it is biting. Rather than careening towards sitcom catharsis, it lets anticlimaxes break like waves against the film’s charming, strange family. Shooting with a skeleton crew in lush green settings, Hong Sang-soo employs a soft focus that comes and goes with the nonchalance of a bar-napkin masterpiece.

– Lev Kalman