After her daughter Sumi slips on ice after a suspected incident with a bear and is temporarily put into an induced coma, widowed Sara flies from Seoul to Winnipeg to be by her side.
Being somewhat the tiger mother, Sara believes this accident would never have happened if Sumi were married and had a man to protect her. Free to scheme while her daughter sleeps, she sets up an online dating account under Sumi’s name and starts chatting away, determined to find her an ideal Korean husband, preferably a doctor.
In the course of this kooky quest, audiences get a cooked up kimchi rather like a pretzel pasta – a lasagne layered twist and turny tale of coincidence, kinship and karma.
In THE MOTHER AND THE BEAR, Sara learns some surprising secrets about Sumi, receives dick pics from strangers and discovers muscle easing pleasures from electronic devices. Executive produced by Pablo Larraín, THE MOTHER AND THE BEAR is a “Winter-peg” comedy from acclaimed Chinese-Canadian director Johnny Ma is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.
Korean actress Kim Ho-jung, in a delightfully fun performance, brings a formidable screen presence with an engaging and natural empathy, as nuanced as other similar Korean mother figures, such as Choi Seung-yoon’s single mother in Anthony Shim’s exquisite intercontinental drama Riceboy Sleeps, and Yuh-jung Youn’s grandma in Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, and the recent The Wedding Banquet.
Screening with THE MOTHER AND THE BEAR is I’M THE MOST RACIST PERSON I KNOW, a perfectly curated entree to the main course. Playful and poignant, I’M THE MOST RACIST PERSON I KNOW is the story of how Lali unexpectedly ends up on a date with another woman of colour for the first time and ironic prejudices she has long ignored begin to unravel. A recent SXSW Special Jury Award Winner, Writer/Director Leela Varghese gets maximum mileage from this quarter hour comedy starring Shabana Azeez and Kavitha Anandasivam.
THE MOTHER & THE BEAR screens with I’M THE MOST RACIST PERSON I KNOW this Sunday 8 June at 6pm at Event George Street, Cinema 3.
https://www.sff.org.au/
