In Front of Your Face
The Cinema Guild | Release Date: May 6, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
85
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 13 Critic Reviews
Positive:
11
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
CineVueChristopher MachellSep 26, 2022
A captivating film of deep emotional power; like weeds slowly cracking the pavement above, its movements in isolation are barely felt but its effects are profound. Read full review
100
The PlaylistElena LazicJul 19, 2021
Despite being shot during the pandemic, In Front of Your Face is one of the South Korean director’s most open films of late, poignant in its use of a simple structure to touch on the eminently difficult question of how to live happily between past, present, and future. Read full review
100
Screen DailyLee MarshallJul 19, 2021
The nothing much that unfurls over the following eighty or so minutes feels like everything. Read full review
91
The Film StageDavid KatzJul 19, 2021
A body of work like components of a house: one film is a corridor, another a small bedroom window. Others are the structural backbone. A looming jewel of a career, right in front of your face. Read full review
90
Little White LiesTrevor JohnstonSep 26, 2022
This is another subtle jewel, wise and charming, insouciant yet measured, and somehow squaring the circle between the overwhelming sadness of lost time and the glint of eternity in a passing instant. Read full review
90
TheWrapDave WhiteMay 7, 2022
The result is one of Hong’s most emotionally generous films. In a career full of small triumphs, it’s a beautiful gesture of family love, of non-specific spiritual awakening, and self-possession meant to create outward waves of goodness. Read full review
90
The New YorkerRichard BrodyMay 5, 2022
Here, more than ever, Hong’s cinema is also revealed to be a philosophy—his method not a means but an end in itself, an embrace of the history of the art and a preservation of its future in the eternal present tense of creation. Read full review
90
VarietyJessica KiangJul 26, 2021
Hong’s film and his radiant star are not made for melancholy, and so instead they laugh — at the absurdity of hoping for some castle in the air when there’s so much life all around you, always, right in front of your face. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungJul 19, 2021
Typical of Hong’s work, the laid-back anti-storytelling lets daily life flow slowly by without incident, until a revelatory twist in the last act gives the film its meaning. It will certainly appeal to his festival fan base but neophytes beware: It takes patience to get to hidden truths, and even so they are about as clear as a Zen koan. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineChuck BowenAug 1, 2021
The film is an obsessive rumination on the little squabbles and inconveniences and pleasures that add up to the bulk of our lives. Read full review
83
Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganMay 6, 2022
In most other filmmaker’s hands, these seemingly inconsequential observations wouldn’t seamlessly create a tender and alluring narrative. Yet Hong Sang-soo seems to have it all down to a science. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeSep 26, 2022
In Front of Your Face is a gentle pleasure and, as such, may not be a picture that will win new fans to the films of director Hong Sang-soo. But admirers of his distinctive style – long takes, zooms, social awkwardness, vast quantities of strong alcohol – will be beguiled by this bittersweet series of encounters. Read full review
60
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergMay 5, 2022
The secret is poised somewhere between triteness and disarming simplicity. Read full review
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