Mother (Bong Joon-ho)
Mother (Bong Joon-ho)
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Synopsis

Bong Joon-ho, director of the hugely successful monster-comedy The Host, delivers a more serious, but equally grotesque crime thriller about the older, single mother (Kim Hye-ja) of a grown son (Do-joon) who is "on the slow side." On the street one night, he drunkenly crosses paths with a schoolgirl and follows her until she vanishes into an alley. When her body turns up mutilated, the police quickly arrest and convict him. But mother is a madwoman, and she will stop at nothing to prove his innocence. "The triumph of Mothe rests on its sheer faith in suspense...a morally punishing film" (Time Out Hong Kong). Winner of Asian Film Awards for Best Actress, Film and Screenwriter. In Korean with English subtitles. Bong Joon-ho---South Korea---2009---128 mins.

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   | Lewis#4

In his very successful 2006 film “The Host,” director Bong Joon-ho, when he wasn’t focusing on the predations of a giant salamander, told a story about the power of parental love. This 2009 film runs with this theme, giving us a character of preternaturally strong maternal instincts. The unnamed mother of the title (Kim Hye-ja), an herbalist and unlicensed acupuncturist in a small Korean town, is fiercely protective of her grown son Do-joon (Won Bin). Do-joon is an intellectually "slow" and developmentally challenged young man, accepted affectionately by the town, although sometimes taunted. When the police finger Do-joon for the murder of a young girl (and extract a confession from this dim-witted soul), the mother goes into action, conducting her own relentless investigation of the crime and leading us to plot twists that I dare not reveal. At the center of the film is the sterling performance of Kim Hye-ja, who presents us with a woman of late middle age whose undemonstrative manner conceals a will of iron. The matter of her son’s innocence or guilt becomes, ultimately, unimportant. To protect her child this mother will stop at nothing. In her moral universe this mandate trumps all other considerations. Is there a father? Obviously, yes, there must have been a biological father. But he has no presence in this film. If he were on the scene, he would likely be an extraneous element, of little use. This is the mother’s show, and we dare not stand in her way. Another really fine, offbeat film from an emerging leader of the Korean “new wave.”

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