Review of Mother (Madeo)

     

     From South Korean director Jooh-ho Bong comes a movie that plays fast and loose with the noir-murder mystery by replacing its hard boiled P.I. in a fedora and trench coat, with an earthy, medicinal herb selling mother of one with little more to guide her than her maternal instincts and the leverage provided by her promises of free acupuncture.  Set in a small rural town in South Korea, the movie revolves around the brutal murder of a teenage girl.  When the blame is immediately placed on the titular character’s son, a slightly mentally challenged twenty-eight year old whose memory is frustratingly inaccessible, our hero is forced to act. 
     Her search for what she knows is the truth is riveting.  She delves far beneath the seemingly constant lull of the townspeople to discover what all similar towns reveal: lots and lots of teenage promiscuity.  While some strides are made here, we see that our protagonists’ strongest attributes are not her detective abilities--in one embarrassing instance involving a golf club and lipstick we see her detective abilities are rather inept if not totally absent--but her knowledge that stored deep inside her son’s vault like brain are the memories of exactly what transpired the night of the girl’s murder.  Which to her, will undoubtedly prove his innocence.
     On display throughout the film is Joon-ho Bong’s knack for making a film that is beautiful to look at.  He reflects the town’s sullen and melancholy atmosphere perfectly with deliberate camera movements and edits.  He also harnesses Hye-ja Kim’s worn and weary countenance as the mother by rarely ever having the camera shoot her in anything less than a medium close-up.  
     Like Joon-ho Bong’s previous film, The Host, Mother takes a genre we are very familiar with and adds to it terrific weirdness along with a strong message about the importance of family unity.  While both films have these similarities, Mother  differs in that it is a movie about memories: how we categorize them, how we forget them, and ultimately, how we access them (an acupuncture technique, a cell phone, and sometimes, a simple flying kick to the head).