TIFF Review: Three Movies About Souls Lost and Found
Author : Kevin Klawitter
Authorship : AWARDSDAILY
Date : 2019-09-24
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TIFF Review: Three Movies About Souls Lost and Found
Kevin
Klawitter September
8, 2019 Bring Me Home In
the introduction to this movie, director Kim Seung-woo pointed out that this
film doesn’t open in his native Korea for several months, and as such requested
revelations of plot be kept to a minimum. I’m going to do my best to abide by
the director’s wishes, suffice to say that Bring Me Home is an
excellent debut, showing inventiveness in storytelling, strong development of
characters, and a willingness to take the story in directions the audience does
not expect. Bring Me Home is a captivating, at times
brutal thriller about the lengths a mother will go to to find and protect her
child. The
movie stars Lee Young-ae (in her first film appearance since Park
Chan-wook’s Lady Vengeance) as Jung-yeon, an ER nurse whose
son disappears and remains missing for years while she and her husband try to
find him. The trauma of losing a child, compounded by other accidents and
abuses that occur over the course of the movie seem to be turning Jung-yeon
into a shell of a human, and yet she still maintains hope that she will be able
to find her son. She knows it’s possible because a friend of hers was
kidnapped as a youth but still managed to make hit home where as an adult he
tries to reunite missing children with their families (although way his own
story goes… well, you’ll have to watch the movie itself to find out).
Knowing that the survival and return of her child is a possibility, Jung-yeon
will fight against corruption, criminality, inclement weather, and even what
seems to be fate itself to reunite with her son, because that’s what mothers
do. The
complicated and disturbing story is made comprehensible with a first-rate cast,
all of whom make their characters instantly recognizable and distinctive.
We jump from one group of characters to another, not always knowing exactly
what’s going on, but by the end we know exactly what the stakes are and where
the morality lies. Kim Seung-woo has made something very special here,
and I welcome his new voice on the international stage. |
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