Mother (Bong Joon-ho)

[GreenScar]

Click the image above to check out the English dubbed trailer ^^^

One of the films I was most interested to hear about out of Cannes (and am now most interested to see in Toronto) was Bong Joon-ho’s Mother. Bong’s last films were Memories of Murder and The Host, but now he turns to a story of crime and matronly devotion that sounds a lot more in the vein of Park Chan-wook’s films. Now there’s an english-subtitled trailer, and you should be sure to take a look. (Actually, looking around, I see that this has been floating around for a while. But it’s the end of a slow week, we haven’t run it yet, and the film looks great. So enjoy.)

The trailer’s pretty good at recapping the simple plot: a young man is accused of murder and his devoted (possibly over-devoted) mother goes on the hunt for the real killer to keep her kid out of jail. But plot is only the beginning, and the trailer hints that the mother might be expressing more than simple matronly devotion. Those last lines in the clip are so creepy. “…be sure to tell just me, only to me…”

And, as you’d expect from Bong Joon-ho, there’s a serious sense of visual craft on display. It may be dark and a bit grimy, but intentionally so, and very well controlled. Mike D’Angelo, who wrote the AV Club’s excellent Cannes coverage, proclaimed that the film “confirms South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho as one of world cinema’s most versatile and arresting talents…both director and actress fully commit themselves to the title character’s lovingly warped psyche,” which is more than enough to confirm all the latent interest I’ve had in the film.