Mother

Following his refreshing take on the monster genre with "Host" director Bong Joon-Ho once again takes on material suited to mainstream genre fare but offers a unique take on the material. "Mother", is a murder tale, but one combined with the tropes of maternal melodrama.

27-year-old borderline simpleton, Do-jun, lives with his long-widowed mother in a small, anonymous South Korean town. One morning, a young girl is found murdered. Because he followed the girl home from a bar the night before, he is assumed guilty. Not knowing exactly what he states to the police, Do-jun admits to murder. But his mother starts a frantic investigation trying to identify the real killer.

Combining Freudian relations with a subtle representation of the stigmatization of people on the margins Joon-Ho constantly wrong foots the audience, turning familiar scenes into something totally unexpected. With a remarkable visual style, blending realism with poetically subjective compositions and a rhythmically orchestrated narrative, Bong proves his supreme position among South Korea's filmmakers.
JON ASP

Orig. title
Madeo: Cast
Bin Won, Ku Jin, Hye-ja Kim: Producer
Choi Jae-Won, Seo Woo-Sik: Script
Park Eun-Kyo, Bong Joon-Ho, Park Wun-Kyo: Cinematography
Kyung-Pyo Hong: Music
Byeong-woo Lee: Spoken language
Korean: Subtitle
English