Capital Celluloid 2020 – Day 22: Wed Jan 22

Mother (Bong Joon-ho, 2017): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm


The Prince Charles Cinema is trying to bring as many of Bong Joon-ho's titles to their screen as possible to coincide with the release of Parasite; there are continual rights issues with SNOWPIERCER, and MEMORIES OF MURDER has recently become unabailable, but they are working on getting both. Here is their current season, aside from this 35mm presentation.

Chicago Reader review:
With The Host, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho unpacked the cultural and geopolitical baggage of the atomic monster movie; this follow-up (2009) takes on the fractured Freudianism of Hitchcock's Psycho
. Kim Hye-ja, known in South Korea for her maternal roles, plays the mother of a mentally and sexually retarded man who's fallen in with a local troublemaker; in one early scene the boy insists to his pal that he's not a virgin, that he and his mother sleep together, though it's not entirely clear whether he should be believed or even knows what he's saying. When a local schoolgirl is murdered, all evidence points to the son, but the mother declares him innocent and stops at nothing to exonerate him. Bong's opening and climactic scenes, in which the old woman bops around to a dance tune amid a vast field of yellow grass, are typical of the movie's cockeyed poetry.
JR Jones


Here (and above) is the trailer.

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