Review: Mother at TKFF

Mother (director, Bong Joon-ho) is a beautifully shot spin on the film-noir genre. Throughout the film one is constantly readjusting their assessment of the main characters. Things start off simple enough though. You have a widow (Kim Hye-ja) living with her son Do-joon (Won-bin) who is in his late twenties and has an intellectual disability that is hard to define. We get the impression early on that his disability is the result of some sort of accident and not one that he was born with. He is childlike and has difficulty remembering things but at times this is punctuated by an almost frightening lucidity. Do-joon hangs around with Jin-tae (Jin-goo) whom his mother refers to as being a 'bad seed'. Jin-tae is a bit rough around the edges but he does genuinely care for Do-joon in his own way. Mother supports herself and Do-joon by selling medicinal herbs from a tiny and impossibly dark shop and also by doing acupuncture without a license. Suddenly one day a beautiful school girl is found brutally murdered with her corpse left dangling over a rooftop railing for all to see. A golf ball with Do-joon's name scribbled on it is found next to the body so he is immediately taken into custody. Of course his difficulty remembering things doesn't help him out in this situation. We want to believe his innocence as he stares into the camera with eyes that another character describes as "... a work of art, like a deer's". Mother goes on a quest to prove Do-joons innocence and she will literally stop at nothing to do so. In the process of her investigation we learn the tragic details of the murdered school girl Ah-jeong's life as she fends for herself whilst taking care of her senile and alcoholic grandmother.

Won-bin is truly excellent as Do-joon. When playing characters that are intellectually disabled actors have a tendency to over do things but Won-bin kept his performance completely believable throughout which was of course integral to the film's overall impact. Kim Hye-ja is also excellent as mother (we never learn her name) who is on the surface a simple and impoverished woman caring for her son but is in actuality more complex than you could ever guess. I also enjoyed Jin-goo's performance as Jin-tae, in particular during the carnival interrogation scene. He added unexpected moments of humour to what was otherwise a very dark film  .

The two main themes of the film are forgetting and remembering and ultimately which do you choose to do and why. The final scene depicts this most accurately and will linger in your mind long after the film is done.

For more info on the Toronto Korean Film Festival 2012 and to purchase tickets, click here.