Mother - Blu-ray Review

'a challenging and complex tale with numerous layers of ambiguity and threat'

Joon-ho Bong's The Host is a fantastically shot and directed monster movie about the invasion of Seol by some sort of river-dwelling beastie, which keeps on carting off local people in a none-too pleasant way. His follow up, Mother, is nothing of the sort. In fact, the films really couldn't be any more different. Mother is a slow-burning thriller revolving around a murder case which sees simple-natured Do-joon (Bin Won) wrongly arrested and convicted, leaving Hye-ja Kim's maternal figure as the only person who believes in his innocence and is willing to do anything about it.

From this standard starting point, Bong sets about telling a challenging and complex tale with numerous layers of ambiguity and threat. Kim's passionate mother is a riveting character but equally a completely unpredictable one, flitting between despair and resolute investigative integrity. In many ways, this is a police procedural but in Bong's hands the layers of the genre are un-wrapped, manipulated and repackaged. This is a film where anything goes and Bong isn't averse to including horror or gangland elements in the otherwise fairly straightforward plot.

What this means is that Mother is, at times, a difficult watch. On several occasions, Bong's plot turns deliver sucker punches that are difficult for both the characters and audience to cope with, driving the film forwards into uncharted and uncertain territory. The development of Jin-tae (Ku Jin) is one of the few pleasing aspects of the plot but Bong, eager to unsettle and secure our engagement, limits our exposure to him, only having him appear to help or hinder Mother when it is absolutely necessary.

The director's pacing too seems designed to deliberately challenge anyone who thinks they can sit down for a passive couple of hours. Bong delivers the film through large and methodically chosen helpings of plot, rather than abstract vistas to show off Kyung-Pyo Hong's beautifully lit cinematography. At over two hours, this amount of plotting can be difficult to take but Bong's technical know-how and calculated risk taking keeps you involved, even if his twists can sometimes unsettle in stomach-crunching ways.