The Mother and the Bear examines immigrant family tensions in a modest drama

Johnny Ma’s film The Mother and the Bear is a Korean Canadian soap-opera-style drama about a mother who travels to Canada after her daughter, a young Korean woman living in Winnipeg, falls in an alley and is placed in a medically induced coma. The mother, Sara, is played by Kim Ho-jung; the daughter is played by Leere Park.

According to the review, Sara creates an online dating profile to try to find her distant, comatose daughter a husband and begins sexting with a man played by Jonathan Kim, who had saved her from a slip in a store. Sara also finds an in-person connection with that man’s father (Won-jae Lee), who disapproves of his son’s white girlfriend, who is the daughter’s doctor.

The daughter’s fall may or may not have been caused by a bizarre bear sighting. The reviewer, Brandon Yu, describes the film as moderately charming but “blandly earnest,” saying its twists can be contrived, silly and a little weird while the overall execution remains relatively sedate.

He writes that the film treads familiar ground about immigrant dissonances and the struggle to express love and acceptance, and that Sara’s path to reconnecting involves one-sided conversation, homemade kimchi and a late-life journey of self-discovery. The film runs 1 hour 40 minutes, is not rated, is in Korean with subtitles and is in theaters.

Key Topics

Culture, Johnny Ma, Kim Ho-jung, Leere Park, Winnipeg, Dekanalog Films