Mother (2009 film)

Plot

An unnamed widow lives alone with her only son, selling medicinal herbs in a small town in southern South Korea while doing unlicensed acupuncture to the town's women on the side. Her son Do-joon is shy, but prone to attack anyone who mocks his intellectual disability. She dotes on him and scolds him for hanging out with Jin-tae, a local ne'er-do-well.

A high school girl is discovered dead on a rooftop in town, shocking the residents and pressuring the incompetent police to find the killer. With only circumstantial evidence placing Do-joon near the scene of the crime, the police are happy with their cursory investigation and arrest the boy. His defense attorney is unreliable, and the police trick Do-joon into signing a confession, leaving him facing a long jail sentence. The police could not figure out why and who would display the girl's dead body on the rooftop where the entire town is in plain view.

The mother, horrified and unconvinced that Do-joon is even capable of murder, gets involved in unraveling the details of the murder and the background of the victim to try to prove her son's innocence. She scours the town, uncovering salacious details of the girl's life, allying with Jin-tae, who is surprisingly sympathetic towards her plight, and unsettling everyone around her in her determined quest for justice.

Cast

Release

Mother competed in the Un Certain Regard category at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Mother attracted 3,003,785 admissions nationwide and grossed a total of US$16,283,879 in South Korea, becoming the 6th most attended domestic film of 2009, and 10th overall. The film had its U.S. premiere in February 2010 as part of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and received a limited U.S. theatrical release by Magnolia Pictures in March 2010. In March 2015, the film saw a re-release in the United States at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. This was part of the Bong Joon-ho Retrospective, alongside "The Host," "Snowpiercer," and "Memories of Murder."

Mother appeared on many film critics' "best-of" lists of 2010.

Awards and nominations

The film was selected as South Korea's official submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards.