by John Villeneuve
Generally, it is difficult to surmise what the academy voters will choose amongst the foreign films submitted to them, because, more often than not, they pick films without controversy, without edge, and without balls. In other words, movies which are not critically acclaimed, but films they can cuddle up to. But, I am willing to bet that they will pick Mother this year, if for only the fact that almost half of the voters are women, and, consequently, this group will be able to relate to a woman who would, and does, consider the unimaginable to defend her child. Furthermore, I am speculating, perhaps wrongly, that they know that Korea has never been nominated—-shameful considering the predominance of auteurs like Park Chan-wook (Oldboy), Kim Ki-duk (3-Iron) and Hong Sang-soo (Woman on the Beach). But mostly, probably naively, I am counting on their knowledge of Bong Joon-ho (Barking Dogs Never Bite, The Host) who has yet to make a middling movie, and who’s new film, Mother, can stand proudly beside his masterful, Memories of Murder.
The film opens with a woman in her mid 50’s strolling, almost meandering, through a hilltop grassy field, seemingly in thought. Then she stops, gazes directly into the camera and begins performing a beguiling, sensuous dance, filled with sorrow, rage and joy, as though she were having an epiphany of which we are not yet cognizant. Meet Kim Hye-ja, the actress playing the mother in question. This opening grabs like a tentacle, and as the film jolts forward, we are introduced to a character who runs the gamut of supposed female contradiction.
A performance that can best be described as acrobatic, Kim Hye-ja is as equally comfortable (and believable) playing demure fragility, as she is miming the serpentine seductress who is coy, conniving and brutal when need be. The story of Mother is deceptively simple: a woman’s son is, presumably, falsely accused and arrested for the brutal murder of a teen-aged school-girl, and, therefore, mother sets out to prove his innocence, ingratiating herself into the most unlikeliest of places. But the story becomes much more psychologically complex and off putting. For example, mother and son have quite an unorthodox relationship. They sleep together in the same bed (seemingly innocent, yet still disconcerting). Moreover, mother practices herbal medicine on her son, which requires her to watch him relieve himself in order to analyze his urine.
The son, who his friends refer to as “special”, is mentally challenged, a dullard and a drunk, easily susceptible to suggestion. And when he is accused of murder, the mother turns into a type of amateur sleuth (a deranged Miss Marple, is more like it). To tell more of the plot would be a disservice, because the pleasure is in watching this part-time herbalist/acupuncturist mother turn to unhinged matriarch, calculatedly searching for her own desired outcome. Needless to say, this is an incredibly complicated role, full of contradictions and psychological tight-rope walking. Kim Hye-ja shuttles between ineffectual and doting mother, to vulnerable, yet, wily, semi-investigator, to the ferocious mouse that roars, baring not claws, but acupuncture needles, who will stop at nothing to protect her son. It is a remarkable performance.
Much like Memories of Murder, Mother, too, is saturated with droll and wry humor. Early on, there is a sequence in which the mother attends the funeral of the girl her son is charged with killing, and what transpires is hilarious and heart-breaking at the same time. However, thematically, Joon-ho’s film owes more to De Sica’s, The Bicycle Thief, than to your standard murder mystery, because the more mother searches for information that will absolve her son, the clearer it becomes that we are witnessing an entire town on the brink of moral collapse.
But, ultimately, the success of the film lies on the shoulders of its actress, Kim Hye-ja. I am told that in all her previous South Korean films she has been an icon of sensibility and motherly saintliness. What a shock it must have been for Koreans to see the facade shatter, because, here, she is a crackerjack of mixed personas, like an arsenic candy, reminding one that “hell hath no fury…”, well, you know the rest. When a foreign performance like this comes around one wishes there were an additional category, at Oscar time, for the 5 best international performances (male or female), because the likelihood of a nomination, here, is decidedly nil.
Nevertheless, this damning portrait of small-town existence is devastatingly universal. With great cinematography in cyan tones, and a score that simultaneously slithers and soothes, Mother is a wonderfully eccentric, absurd and gripping film that splutters and disarms, while reminding us that under every rock lies more than we can take, and more than we want to know. And, it is for these reasons, I believe, Mother will be honored with a nomination. Of course, unti then, my fingers will remain crossed.
