Mother (2010)

As South Korea’s official entry for the Academy Award in the foreign-language film category, Mother may not have made it to the final five nominations, but that doesn’t mean this alternately comedic, clever, and chilling mystery should be ignored. After all, as Norman Bates said, “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”

In this case, the mother (Hye-ja Kim) is a middle-aged woman with a small storefront selling herbal medicines. She’s also an unlicensed acupuncturist. And she dotes on her son, Do-joon (Bin Won), a twentysomething boy who’s a little slow mentally, but knows enough to get mad when anyone calls him “idiot” or “retard.” He tends to hang out with his friend Jin-tae (Goo Jin), regarded as a bad seed by his mother. One day, these two are loitering on the curb opposite Mom’s door when Do-joon is nicked in a hit-and-run. Jin-tae notes the offending car is a Mercedes-Benz and correctly surmises the driver is headed for the local golf course. The two young men track down the car, have a wrestle royale in a sand trap with the hit-and-run golfers, and they all get hauled off to the police station.

Soon thereafter, Do-joon’s mother shows up, distributing little bottles of rice liquor to the police officers’ desks, and when the scene cuts to mother and son back home eating dinner together, one gets the distinct impression that this isn’t the first time she’s had to bail him out of a jam with the cops. She tells him to stay away from that no good Jin-tae who keeps getting him into trouble, but Do-joon doesn’t listen and leaves to get drunk at a local bar while trying to find his friend.

The next morning, a young girl’s lifeless body is found draped over a rooftop railing, and circumstantial evidence leads the police to arrest Do-joon for the murder. Worse, they coerce the confused young man into signing a confession. Visiting him in jail, his mother pleads for her son to remember anything that could exonerate him. Unfortunately, his drunken state from the night before, coupled with his mental deficiency, causes his memories to be random and unreliable.

The police consider it an open-and-shut case, and, despite the sympathetic ear of one detective (Yoon Jae-Moon) who’s known both mother and son for years, they don’t intend to lift a finger to find any other suspects. The expensive lawyer Do-joon’s mother hires sees a plea bargain as the best solution. But that’s not acceptable to Mom. She wants justice and freedom for her son, and that means finding the real killer, even if she has to do it herself. So she begins a personal investigation that has faint whiffs of Death Wish-style vengeance, but is more like a methodical exploration of the seamy underbelly of the community, reminiscent of Kurosawa’s crime dramas High And Low and Stray Dog, and even evoking Blue Velvet and The Silence Of The Lambs at certain moments.

Like many of the superior-quality thrillers and horror films produced by Asian filmmakers recently, Mother will probably receive a Hollywood remake sooner or later, and they’ll no doubt mess it up with a corny rewrite featuring lots of gunplay and some aging-yet-still-hot actress (Sigourney Weaver, perhaps) as Mom. But what really makes this South Korean gem work is the skilled performance of a relatively plain-looking actress in the lead role.

Hye-ja Kim is hypnotic from the first frame, where she walks haltingly across a golden field toward the camera, and, displaying almost no emotion, dances through the opening credits. It’s an amusing and unusual image that sets the tone for both the film and her character. She’s a typical mother in many ways–relentlessly watching over her son, reminding her neighbors and customers to take their medicines, obsessed with cleaning up spills–and though she may have to go to extraordinary lengths and confront some shocking, dark truths, she does so out of simple motherly love. A “prettier” Hollywood actress or more classically beautiful woman would not be as believable in the role as Hye-ja Kim is, with her stone-like face and quietly expressive eyes. She’s terrific.

Director and cowriter Bong Joon-ho had international success several years ago with his riverside monster thriller The Host, and this follow-up film is further evidence that South Korea has a burgeoning pool of creative talent, especially in the genre of twist-filled suspense stories. Mother is funny across any language barrier, surprising and unnerving at times, and has a great ending–all anchored by this simple-looking middle-aged woman who symbolically stands for mothers everywhere, those who would do anything to protect their sons. This is a great movie to see with a loved one for Mother’s Day. Especially if Mom is into acupuncture.

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