Final Rating: 4/5
It can be a difficult challenge to be a child of parents who have rigid expectations of you. It is predetermined what career you will have, who you will marry and what your social life will be like. This is a trend found especially in immigrant children, who will often spend their entire lives fighting for their own autonomy from their parents. At what point does a parent’s visions go from wanting the best for their offspring to holding them hostage?
In The Mother and the Bear, directed by Johnny Ma, Sumi (Leere Park) has escaped her overbearing mother by moving to the wintery hellscape known as Winnipeg, Manitoba. She ignores her mothers phone calls and tries to live her life despite the voicemails complaining about her being unmarried and living so far away from home. One night out she spies an adorable rabbit in an alleyway and gives it some food. Then a loud rustling coming from a dumpster startles her, and when Sumi tries to run away, she slips on some ice knocking her out cold and giving her a concussion.
Sumi’s mother Sara (Kim Ho-jung), a widower living in Korea who runs a guesthouse, flies out to Canada to help take care of her daughter while she recovers in a coma. She hopes that while she is in Winnipeg she can also find a nice Korean man for her daughter to date, and if he is a doctor even better!
One her first night staying in Sumi’s apartment, the car lent to Sara by a relative who also lives in the city gets towed for being parked in front of a snow covered fire hydrant. So Sara resorts to taking the bus around town. Sara is aghast that Sumi has no food in her fridge (let alone Korean food), she goes shopping to get what she needs to make kimchi and overhears some passersby about a Korean restaurant they are going to go to. Sara follows them and meets Sam (Lee Won-jae), the owner of Tasty Seoul where they strike up a friendship based on the fact that both of their children are not dating other Koreans.
One night while in her daughter’s apartment, Sara gets spooked when Amaya (Amara Pedroso) enters to feed the so far unseen cat that Sumi owns. She asks Amaya why her daughter lives in Winnipeg and why she doesn’t tell her mother anything. Amaya, knowing Sumi, can’t flat out reveal why Sara’s daughter is unable to be honest about her day to day life with her own mother.
Sara decides that she will try to catfish a man for her daughter, when one of the nurses at the hospital helps set her up on a dating app. She gets a match and strikes up a digital conversation with Min (Jonathan Kim), Sam’s son who happens to be dating the white doctor treating Sumi.
Throughout the film, Sara slowly starts to learn about her daughter and form a relationship with her all the while that Sumi is in a coma, completely unaware that her mother is even in the country. She gets to see Sumi’s work as a piano teacher and how the students all adore her, hoe despite her daughter seemingly cutting out her family has named her cat after her deceased father and why she hasn’t been dating any nice Korean boys.
Johnny Ma has crafted a deeply heartfelt and comedic film that explores how much can be revealed about a person when you stop thinking about yourself and instead accept information with an open mind. It was surprising to learn at a screening during the Toronto International Film Festival that Ma, who is Chinese born and had never been to Winnipeg, was able to write such a tender story about a mother/daughter relationship filled with Korean influences.
Kim Ho-jung, a veteran of Korean cinema (having worked with the likes of Bong Joon-ho and Hong Sang-soo) turns in an utterly charming performance. Her comedic timing is impeccable from singing and dancing around Sumi’s apartment after eating some unmarked gummy bears hidden in the fridge to pretending to nonchalantly stalk some pedestrians as they are going to get Korean food for lunch to digging through her bulky parka to answer a phone call. Her friendship with Sam warms the heart and when she realizes she might not be as good of a parent she believes she is, is poignant.
Ma also includes splashes of visual flair. Early in the film Sara first spies Min in a convenience store and hallucinates him with hearts creating a border around him while he speaks directly to him saying he will make everything right. Later on when grabbing a beer with Amaya, who has some deeply personal information to reveal, it is done like a karaoke video completely with English and Korean subtitles while confetti is being shot all around the bar.
The film infuses the melodrama of Korean television with heartfelt comedy. There are several moments of true heartbreak that will leave you reeling from the rawness that the film will touch. Ma also does the unthinkable by making Winnipeg look warm and inviting, even if the film takes place during the dead of winter when the temperature is routinely -40. There even is a surprise cameo from Winnipeg’s maestro, Guy Maddin as a cheeky dog walker in a blink and you’ll miss it moment. At the end if you aren’t craving a hearty bowl of noodles and a big plate of kimchi, then you just might be dead inside.
The Mother and the Bear was seen during the 2024 Vancouver International Film Festival. Thank you to Elevation Pictures for the screener.
