What typically drives the plot in a police procedural? Generally, we're presented with chases and gunfights leading up to the lead detective's wife getting kidnapped, where shit proceeds to get personal. In ""Mother,"" the emotion of homicide investigation comes from a protective mother who refuses to back down on her appeal to the detectives that her son ""couldn't hurt a waterbug!""
The latest from South Korean writer/director Joon-ho Bong, ""Mother"" opens with an overprotective mother hovering over her mentally hanicapped son. She monitors his every movement, bails him out of any trouble he finds himself in and in a creepy, oedipal ritual each night, the pair even sleep in the same bed, leading to confusing conversations when the son describes in what capacity he ""sleeps with a woman"" each night to his buddies.
Hye-ja Kim, whose character is only known as Mother, plays this hovering maternal figure with just the right bent of obsessive insanity. We're not exactly certain what her character will do should she find someone has done harm to her son, Do-joon (played by Bin Won). She anxiously chases after a car that picks him up, thinking he's been kidnapped. She slips the knife off the cutting board, nearly losing a finger because she obsessively stares at her boy as he stands across the street.
A homicide disturbs their obsessive relationship when Do-joon signs a confession to murdering a young girl, landing him directly in jail. Since the boy cannot remember why he was the last person seen with the girl when she was breathing, he confesses despite being fairly certain that he was innocent. After a frustrating battle with the red tape and legalese to get her son's name cleared, Mother resolves to solve the case herself by giving the murdered girl's life the CSI treatment, uncovering her seedy dealings and the true identity of her killer.
As we saw in his last film, ""The Host,"" Bong often plays abuses of government officials against people who are too stupid or frustrated to deal with them. Mother's pleas with the detectives to re-open her boy's case are heartbreaking, and her confused interactions with a high-powered attorney who engineers an insanity plea underscore the unsatisfying quality of the justice system.
There's an awkward transition period as Mother realizes she can't trust officials, but the film really hits its stride when she finally takes the investigation into her own hands, a process that mingles goofy moments (stealing a golf club and wrapping it in a glove for ""DNA testing"") with brutal ones (debriefing a suspect who had his front teeth kicked in by a fellow interrogator).
At its core, ""Mother"" is more about exploring how far a mother-son relationship will go in spite of any quest for justice, peace or police brutality. Mother is restless and uneasy until she gets her son out of jail, which imparts a frantic pacing to the film's much steadier second half. And, in the film's final act, her frenzy for Do-joon's freedom brings some unexpected surprises to her character that make this more than a simple murder mystery.
""Mother"" ran at the Wisconsin Film Festival on Sunday night, but is currently running at Sundance Cinema. For those who missed it the first time around, they are getting a second chance that should not be passed up.
