What Does That Nature Say To You Review

With What Does That Nature Say To You, Hong Sang-soo delivers a contemplative piece on dreams, ambition, family and success.

What Does That Nature Say To You opens on thirty-five-year-old Donghwa (Ha Seong-guk, of A Traveler’s Needs) driving his girlfriend, Junhee (Kang So-yi), to her family’s house outside of Seoul. Once they arrive at her family’s house, Donghwa can’t help himself from commenting on the size and sprawling beauty of the home, to which Junhee reluctantly invites him to come look further at it. When Donghwa and Junhee venture up the driveway, they are greeted by Junhee’s father, Oryeong (Kwon Hae-hyo, of By the Stream). Despite the couple having been together for the past three years, this is the first time Donghwa has been to Junhee’s childhood home and met her family in any degree. 

Oryeong quickly creates a kinship with Donghwa and invites him to stay longer to visit with the family so they can get to know him better. Donghwa is a poet, more in aspiration than in practice, and the son of a well-known attorney in South Korea. While his relationship to his father is often brought up, Donghwa doesn’t like to cling to his father’s success, as he wishes to earn his own acclaim through his poetry. 

Donghwa’s ideals about the world are pessimistic, untrusting and generally negative. He thinks in absolutes and while he claims he doesn’t believe in the importance of material goods, he surely is impressed by Junhee’s parents and the lives they’ve worked to earn. Oryeong seems fascinated by the man Junhee has brought home, especially by how little she has mentioned him. 

Junhee, both extraordinarily laid back and effortlessly well-liked, is the apple of her family’s eye. While her sister, Neunghee (Park Mi-so, of The Novelist’s Film), is in the midst of a depressive episode, her entire family firmly understands the importance of hard work in order to gain success, but are able to joke about the comforts they have been awarded in their lives. 

As Donghwa spends the day meandering in Junhee’s hometown with her and Neunghee, both his and Junhee’s true identities begin to reveal themselves as well as the cracks within their relationship. Accentuated by Oryeong’s insistence on drinking in order to celebrate this first meeting, as the couple sits down to dinner with Junhee’s family, the issues they have clearly been avoiding cannot help but be brought to light. 

What Does That Nature Say To You is a uniquely original and utterly revealing look at the sprawling differences in multi-generational relationships in regards to ambition, success and finances. Donghwa and Junhee are foils to Junhee’s seemingly perfect parents. While they have been together for three years and share a sense of comfort within their relationship, it’s based on familiarity rather than true devotion to one another. 

While we aren’t given a lot of background on Oryeong and his wife, Sunhee (Cho Yunhee, of By the Stream), we understand they’ve worked hard for the life they get to enjoy with one another. They have made a beautiful living for themselves, despite the hardships life has dealt them, and are able to give back to their daughters as they enter adulthood and try to pave their own paths. Their partnership is not just functional, but affectionate and they seem like not only spouses but also true friends. 

Donghwa and Junhee, on the other hand, have not had to put their relationship through any major tests life has thrown their way. This meeting of the parents, three years into the relationship, seems to be the first test of sorts they have been through. It’s easy when it’s just you and one other person to avoid discrepancies and work through differences in your own private way, but bringing in the involvement of family members, a step that is usually considered to solidify the seriousness of a relationship, invites the more concrete obstacles of real life into your partnership. 

Even through the introduction of Donghwa to Junhee’s sister, Neunghee, Junhee needs to answer pressing questions about the discrepancies in her partnership’s personalities and world views as compared to hers. Neunghee, who knows her so deeply, sheds light on the incompatible aspects of Junhee’s relationship that are getting too difficult to ignore. 

Junhee is driven, has a good relationship with her family and is widely loved by those who meet her. Donghwa enjoys being seen as an outsider, thinking it adds to the way in which he’s romanticized his “career” as a poet. However, his devotion to his otherness is shallow and easily disproven. He speaks of struggle but knows nothing about it, as at the end of the day, no matter how much he wants to avoid any connection to his father, he cannot outrun this aspect of his identity. Through watching their relationship be analyzed under a harsher and brighter light, it seems Junhee understands their differences are something she can no longer ignore for the sake of the relationship. 

Hong Sang-soo’s dialogue feels so natural that it’s as if the audience was eavesdropping on a real couple’s souring relationship. The core cast’s familial dynamic is beyond authentic and within the struggles between Junhee, Donghwa and the rest of the family, the discomfort of the group permeates from the screen and crawls into your seat with you.  

33 films in, 30 of them from 2000 to the present day, Sang-soo is at the top of his game. He understands and portrays the everyday issues that plague human connections with a shocking degree of candor. His filmmaking style reinvents the concept of intimacy between audience members and what they are seeing play out on screen. In What Does Nature Say To You, he is able to not only uphold his intrinsically focused directorial vision, but use it to create an introspective dialogue about connection, ambition and seeing yourself for who you really are. 

What Does That Nature Say To You screened at the New York Film Festival on September , 2025.