Cannes 2009: Mother review

Korean writer/director Bong Joon Ho is best known in the UK for giant-tadpole monster movie The Host – even though his previous film, police procedural killer thriller Memories Of Murder, is far superior.

Mother sees Bong return to the territory of Memories.

It focuses on 28-year-old Do-Joon (Won-Bin), a shy man with learning difficulties who still sleeps with his mother (Kim Hye-Ja) - and maybe in THAT way too, one sequence shows him slipping into bed to cup her breast (‘It’s late…’ she grumbles).
 
Following a teenage girl home one night, Do-Joon awakens the next day to find himself accused of murder.

He doesn’t know if he did it or not, his memory slippy at the best of times. Arrested, banged up, his plight seems hopeless… and then his possessive mother sets out to stoically prove his innocence.
 
Like Memories, Mother is slow-burner that unfurls with great deliberation, its muted images bordering on the lyrical.

But whereas Ho’s superlative 2003 thriller was entirely absorbing and frequently suspenseful in spite of its leisurely pacing, this picture only keeps a tenuous grip on viewers’ attentions and ultimately pivots on a device that is as much cheat as sleight-of-hand.
 
Showing in the Un Certain Regard section of the festival, it concluded to neither claps or boos after 129 minutes, the audience shuffling out in silence.

Transfixed? Awed? More likely nobody felt strongly enough either way to demonstrate their feelings – Mother is competent, no more, no less.