Madeo
| Mother | |
|---|---|
Theatrical poster
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| Directed by | Bong Joon-ho |
| Produced by | Choi Jae-won Seo Woo-sik |
| Written by | Bong Joon-ho Park Eun-kyo |
| Starring |
Kim Hye-ja Won Bin |
| Music by | Lee Byung-woo |
| Cinematography | Hong Kyung-pyo |
| Edited by | Moon Sae-kyung |
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Production
company |
CJ Entertainment
Barunson |
| Distributed by | CJ Entertainment (South Korea) |
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Release date
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Running time
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128 minutes |
| Country | South Korea |
| Language | Korean |
| Budget | US$5 million |
| Box office | US$17.1 million |
| Mother | |
| Hangul | |
|---|---|
| Revised Romanization | Madeo |
| McCune–Reischauer | Madŏ |
Mother (Hangul: 마더; RR: Madeo) is a 2009 South Korean drama film directed by Bong Joon-ho, starring Kim Hye-ja and Won Bin.
An unnamed widow lives alone with her only son, selling medicinal herbs in a small town in southern South Korea while conducting unlicensed acupuncture to the town's women on the side. Her son Yoon Do-joon is shy, but prone to attack anyone who mocks his intellectual disability. She dotes on him and scolds him for hanging out with Jin-tae, a local ne'er-do-well. When Do-joon is nearly hit by a car, he and Jin-tae vandalize the car and attack the driver and passengers as revenge. Jin-tae blames Do-joon for the damage done to the car, and Do-joon is sued. The debt causes Mother to struggle.
Late at night, Do-joon follows a high school girl named Moon Ah-jung into an abandoned building. The next morning, she is discovered dead on a rooftop, shocking the residents and pressuring the incompetent police to find the killer. Only circumstantial evidence places Do-joon near the scene of the crime. The police happily arrest the boy. He is then tricked into signing a confession, and faces a long prison sentence. Mother, believing him to be innocent, tries to find ways to prove he is not the murderer. However, she is unsuccessful, as the lawyer is unreliable.
Mother visits Jin-tae, who tells her that nobody should be trusted, as Ah-jung's body was placed from a point where everyone in the town could see it. Mother fires her lawyer and asks people around town about Ah-jung. They mention she was nicknamed, "the rice cake girl," and that she liked boys. She was in a relationship with a boy who escaped a sanatorium known as "Crazy JP."
Do-joon is seen beating another prisoner who calls him "retard." Mother visits him about the matter, and Do-joon recalls a memory of Mother trying to kill him with rat poison when he was 5. Mother tries to apologize, saying she wanted to free them both and offers to give him acupuncture to forget his pain, but he tells her not to see him again. She breaks down and is taken away.
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Wikipedia