On a cold Winnipeg evening, a rustling behind a dumpster in an alleyway startles a young woman, Sumi (Leere Park), who slips and falls on the snowy ground. After being hospitalized, her mother Sara (Kim Ho-jung) travels to Friendly Manitoba to be by her daughter's side as Sumi is placed under a medically induced coma.
As Sumi rests, Sara investigates the life of her daughter, who hasn't returned a phone call in months. To occupy her time, Sara attempts to find Sumi a boyfriend after receiving instruction from a nurse on how to use a dating app, makes an army's worth of kimchi and, generally speaking, tries to learn about the life her daughter has been so evasive about sharing.
During this time, Sara meets Sam (Won-Jae Lee), a restaurant owner in town who has a son similar in age to Sumi. Similar to Sara and Sumi, he has a fractured relationship with his son — although for Sam, the fracture is as a result of his own doing, rather than his son's.
Writer and director Johnny Ma delivers an exemplary film. The Mother and the Bear contains a deceptively simple premise executed beautifully, filling the screen with gentle and warm humour while also balancing universal themes of hope, family and belonging. Although I've so far made the film sound like it's a family film dripping in saccharine circumstances and characters, Ma's script finds the edge that lifts the film from cloying to comforting.
Leading the film, Kim Ho-jun departs from her usual dramatic roles and delivers a note-perfect comedic performance as both a fish out of water and (perhaps overly) concerned mother. As hinted at by the film's title, Kim's Sara is the beating heart of the film, giving it life and love in equal measures. Typically, roles like Sara are written to remind us to call our mothers, but, through Ma's words and Kim's performance, we view the character in a different light. Instead of only feeling gratitude towards our moms, we're willing them to take chances in life and experience more.
A hidden gem at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, The Mother and the Bear is crowd-pleasing without being basic or generic, leaving audiences feeling happy and hopeful.
The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs September 5–15. Get information about tickets and screening at TIFF's website.