The matriarch in question is a herbalist in a small Korean town so devoted to her simpleton son (Won Bin), she’ll stop at nothing to prove his innocence after he’s arrested for murder.
Outstandingly played by Kim Hye-ja, she’s no less a fearsome force of nature than the waste-monster that rampaged through director Bong Joon-ho’s The Host.
His latest may tread similar terrain to Memories Of Murder, but he builds a hypnotically strange, artful atmosphere while keeping a deft handle on the maternal melodrama. A bulky Making Of rounds out a disc that not only a mother can love.
