Even for ardent fans like myself, it can be a challenge to remember which Hong Sang-soo movie is which. The hardest-working man in South Korean show business has written and directed 27 features over the past 26 years, creating an oeuvre that rivals those of Rohmer and Ozu for stubborn variations-on-a-theme consistency. To be fair, Hong did make a notable shift around 2010, becoming less laser-focused on ineffectual men (usually indie-film directors, hence apparent authorial avatars) and more interested in the women who are inevitably mistreated by them; this new emphasis coincided with an increasingly semi-improvisational approach that saw him combine the scripting and shooting processes, often writing scenes in the morning and shooting them that same afternoon, making the film up as he goes along. Still, a Hong movie has always unmistakably been a Hong movie, even when it throws Isabelle Huppert in among the Koreans (as did both 2012’s In Another Country and 2017’s Claire’s Camera). “What’s the name of the one in which all of the characters work in the film industry and drink way too much soju and embark upon ill-advised romances and get mired in lengthy, deeply awkward conversations and the movie’s second half kinda sorta recapitulates its first half?” is a seemingly very specific question that in fact has many, many possible answers.

That’s what makes In Front of Your Face, Hong’s latest U.S. release, so unusually exciting. (“Hong’s latest film” would be inaccurate, as he’s already made another that premiered at Berlin three months ago. This one bowed at Cannes last summer.) While very much recognizable as his work, it’s a significant tonal departure—contemplative, gently rueful, at times almost beatific. To some extent, that seems to be inspired by his choice to work with Lee Hye-yeong, a major Korean star of the ‘80s who hadn’t appeared in a feature film since 2008. Now almost 60, Lee gives this low-key drama a different center of gravity, playing a woman who’s too preoccupied with her own situation for other people’s dumb bullshit to throw her much. What that preoccupation entails is the film’s other radical divergence: Hong has never before strategically withheld a crucial piece of information and then deployed it like a bomb (albeit an improbably quiet, sedate bomb with confetti for shrapnel). In Front of Your Face is the first of his pictures for which I can even vaguely imagine the possibility of a high-profile U.S. remake, though it’s so minimalist that almost any American director other than Jim Jarmusch would likely invent some additional incident.

Here’s everything that happens. Sang-ok (Lee), who’s spent many years living in the U.S., visits her sister, Jeong-ok (Cho Yun-hee) in Seoul. While walking through a park, the two women ask a couple randomly walking by to take a photo of them in front of some flowers they admire; one of these strangers recognizes Jeong-ok, who we hadn’t been told was once an actor, as someone she saw on TV long ago. (That’s not the aforementioned strategically withheld piece of information, though it does delightfully emerge out of nowhere.) The sisters stop by a rice cake shop owned by Jeong-ok’s son (Shin Seok-ho), only to find that he’s out making a delivery; leaving after a quick snack, they briefly run into him on the street, where he gives Sang-ok a change purse as a gift. Later that day—Hong gonna Hong—Sang-ok meets with, yes, a well-known film director, Jae-won (Kwon Hae-hyo, making what was then his seventh appearance in a Hong joint; the total’s now eight), who vividly remembers a particular performance that Sang-ok gave way back around 1990 and wants to cast her in his new project. Sang-ok politely declines, though she agrees to participate in a short film that they could shoot quickly while she’s in town. That collaboration quickly gets canceled.

Okay, so I’ve myself strategically withheld a couple of key revelations in that synopsis. You get the idea, though—this is not a fast-paced, narrative-heavy work. Nor is it exactly a conventional character study. Mostly, it’s a mood, exemplified by recurring moments in which—also unusual for Hong—we hear the protagonist’s thoughts in voiceover, speaking to God or perhaps just the universe. Sometimes these are prayers, sometimes affirmations. One such interlude gives the movie its title, as Sang-ok asks for help in remaining mindful of what’s right in front of her, rather than constantly feeling regret about the past and anxiety about the future. Even if you’re wildly allergic to both religion and self-help (a distinction without a difference, if you ask me, which I realize you did not, moving on now), the device works beautifully in this context, providing a plangent contrast to the film’s oddly placid, seemingly conflict-free surface. One crucial scene I neglected to mention above sees Sang-ok, en route to meet with the director, stop at her childhood home, which is now a flower shop; after chatting with its owner, she heads upstairs and stands at a window, listening to the offscreen antics of some kids outside. Hong executes one of his patented slow zooms, giving this moment visual weight, but Lee doesn’t telegraph what Sang-ok is thinking, here or elsewhere. The voiceover affirmations thus serve a purpose more expository than therapeutic, serving as a very occasional window into her head.