Madeo

Saw Madeo, a Korean thriller about an aged mother who must find out who is the real killer of a young schoolgirl after her retarded son is accused of the crime. The son amiably agrees to whatever the cops say and when they suggest that maybe he killed the girl he smiles yes and signs whatever. It's not clear if he can read. This is a sad situation lightened a bit by some comic buffoonery and also by the (to me) totally alien culture. At one point the mother goes on a "Thank-You-Parents Bus Tour." What this is I have no idea, except that it apparently involves dancing to K-pop on a bus. Anyway, The central mystery of who killed the schoolgirl makes up the foreground of the plot but the background is made up of the much deeper mystery of the son's relationship with his mother.

One of the first scenes in the film is of the mother in her traditional medicine shop, watching her adult son fool around across the street as she chops some herbs. Suddenly the son is struck by a car and she simultaneously slices off her fingertip. The son is fine, just knocked down, but the scene serves to symbolically link the mother and son in a deep and significant way. He is her body. She suffers when he does. Their relationship is intense and weird. Incest is implied but, by the end of the film, I believe this is discredited. They are bound together by love and hate and old guilt. Their relationship is the real treasure of this film.

The film itself is paced like a mystery. The reveals of the murder case are teased to such heights they made me shiver and the reveals of the relationship case are no less impressive. The central character, the mother, is amazing. She opens the film in a field dancing to the music of the opening credits. I wondered if this was a sad film and her dancing was black irony or if this was a feel-good film and that her dancing was establishing her as a rakish, puckish character. It turns out it was kind of both. An interesting film.

Edit: according to the message boards over at imdb, the director often ties social commentary into his films. This explains the mother-son relationship being so fraught. The mother is supposed to love the son unconditionally, but at what cost? Must she even sacrifice her own humanity to do it? Apparently this is a much tougher film for Koreans.