Cannes. "Mother"

By David Hudson on 05/17/2009

[Updated through 5/18]

"Bong Joon-ho channels Pedro Almodóvar in his fourth feature, an operatic melodrama revolving around a knockout central performance from TV star Kim Hye-ja," writes Mike Goodridge in Screen. "Filled with the elegant compositions and mood-drenched cinematography which are becoming Bong's specialty, 'Mother' is a largely satisfying film which marks the director out as South Korea's most versatile young auteur."

"'Mother' confirms Bong's prodigious talent in bending any genre to serve his own idiosyncratic vision," writes Maggie Lee in the Hollywood Reporter. "Though premiering in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section, it would not feel out of place In Competition. Made with less commercial considerations than the monster movie 'The Host,' his box office smash in Korea, this more personal work may alienate some popular audiences, but critical accolades will give it a boost."

"As in 'Memories of Murder,' Bong economically steeps the viewer in the mindset of the rural community while retaining a slightly ironic distance and occasionally throwing curveballs." Derek Elly in Variety: "When the mother-with-a-mission strides through the landscape, a crazy brass-band march accompanies her on the soundtrack; physical violence has a habit of erupting unexpectedly; and when the story develops a sudden dramatic impetus, composer Lee Byeong-woo ('The Host') cranks up the gently simmering atmosphere with genre-like music."

It "begins and ends spectacularly," but Melissa Anderson, dispatching to Artforum is less impressed with what lies between.

The Hollywood Reporter interviews Bong Joon-ho.

Updates: "Formally, this movie does everything brilliantly (a trend this year)," blogs the Boston Globe's Wesley Morris. "But it's empty. Bong excels at greasing his plots so that scenes slide easily into place. What's missing is the sense that he likes these people, especially the mother, who's as much a nitwit as her son. The movie has written her as tragic but jerks between comedy and bathos. This is ultimately a heartless and, more heartbreakingly, dull affair - at least, by the standards Bong has led us to expect from him."

"Not only is 'Mother' superior to everything I've seen in Competition thus far," writes Mike D'Angelo at the AV Club, "but its UCR placement robs Kim of the Best Actress award she so richly deserves; that she never once slips into caricature or begs for easy pathos is miraculous, and I can only imagine how subversive her performance must be for a Korean audience."

David Phelps in The Auteurs' Notebook: "If Bong's too commercial for any of Imamura's coups of sound or light or cutting - Bong identifies memories and fantasies as fantasies where Imamura just cuts them in as part of the plot - the movie's totally mad anyway: as in Kafka, the main character sees everyone in the world as a lunatic, and is both right and a lunatic herself. There's no steady center; Mother's as every bit destabilized as its title character. The last, flickering shot, as a murderer joins a party bus, simply shows an imbecile reconciled to a carnival of imbeciles, another Bong ship of fools."

"Bong Joon-ho, in South Korea," writes Daniel Kasman, "is making the movies Hollywood should be making - formally precise and inventive, slyly engaging but never overturning popular genres, directed with sincerity and assurance, juggling tones with vitality, focused on the down and out losers of the world, and telling their stories with a high degree of sophistication and entertainment." Even so, this one "packs punch but not depth; 'Mother' dies on the tip of the tongue after being spoken - though it is spoken with energetic pleasure - where 'The Host' and 'Memories of Murder' linger with their rich ambiguity."

Update, 5/18: "Bong starts out playing by the rules of a whodunit, but then bends them when the solution of the mystery comes earlier than we expect, setting up Mom's solution to the solution," writes Tom Carson at GQ. "As it becomes steadily clearer that she'll stop at nothing to save her pride and joy, 'Mother' evolves into a deadpan variant on 'Psycho' in which Mrs Bates is not only alive and well but poor Norman might as well be a stuffed bird. The movie's wit is terrifically dry, and I could swear there isn't one misjudged shot or trite performance in it."

Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 2009.

[Photo: "Mother," CJ Entertainment, 2009]

Tags: Bong Joon-ho, Cannes 2009, Kim Hye-ja, Korean Cinema, Mother