A follow up to her remarkable first feature In Between Days - a coming-of-age story about a Korean immigrant girl's painful adolescence, Treeless Mountain loosely reflects the personal experiences of writer-director So Yong Kim who grew up in South Korea and immigrated to the U.S. when she was twelve years old. It is a meticulously observed portrait of two Korean girls, ages 5 and 7, coping with the terrors of having to rely mostly on their own resources when their mother leaves to search for their estranged father. Like Kelly Reichardt's minimalist Wendy and Lucy, not much happens in the way of plot but the film is less about what happens externally than internally - in the character's tentative groping toward maturity.
Kim's camera is always close to the girls' faces, allowing us to see the world through their eyes. It is still an innocent world but one that is becoming more knowing and, unfortunately, more acclimatized to the lies of adults. When seven-year-old Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and her younger sister Bin (Song Hee Kim) are left by their mother (Soo Ah Lee) in the care of an alcoholic aunt (Mi Hyang Kim), she gives them a piggy bank and tells them that each time they listen to "Big Aunt", a coin will be deposited in their bank. When it is filled, she will return. Big Aunt is cold and cranky and clearly cannot handle the responsibility of caring for the young girls but is more annoying than abusive, calling them a "pain" to be around and berating young Bin for bed wetting.
In one scene, she gives the girls a bowl and tells them to beg the neighbors for sugar. In another, she demands money from a neighbor for a minor scratch Bin suffers when playing with her son. Bin and Jin manage to find friendship, however, with a little handicapped boy and pass the time by capturing and roasting grasshoppers to sell on the streets to help fill their piggy bank. When they discover that they can exchange one large coin for many small ones, they are one step closer to what they believe will be their mother's return. When the bank is filled, the girls wait for their mother at the bus stop, losing faith with each bus that comes and goes without their mother. It is a heartbreaking scene that brings back memories of classic neorealist films of the past.
Optimism and inner strength surface again, however, when, after receiving a letter from the girls' mother, Big Aunt delivers them to their grandparents farm in the countryside. In their return to nature, they can at last breathe free and open themselves to the caring they so desperately need. Recruited through the director's observations of children at local Korean schools rather than through talent agencies, the performances of Hee Yeon Kim and Song Hee Kim are models of authenticity.
There is never any sense that they are simply acting or going through the motions. In the tradition of Koreeda's Nobody Knows, and Ozu's I Was Born But.., Treeless Mountain avoids histrionics or crowd pleasing sentimentality. It is a film about particular children but one that has universal appeal, touching everyone who has experienced the fear of abandonment at one time or another. That means all of us.
Kim's camera is always close to the girls' faces, allowing us to see the world through their eyes. It is still an innocent world but one that is becoming more knowing and, unfortunately, more acclimatized to the lies of adults. When seven-year-old Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and her younger sister Bin (Song Hee Kim) are left by their mother (Soo Ah Lee) in the care of an alcoholic aunt (Mi Hyang Kim), she gives them a piggy bank and tells them that each time they listen to "Big Aunt", a coin will be deposited in their bank. When it is filled, she will return. Big Aunt is cold and cranky and clearly cannot handle the responsibility of caring for the young girls but is more annoying than abusive, calling them a "pain" to be around and berating young Bin for bed wetting.
In one scene, she gives the girls a bowl and tells them to beg the neighbors for sugar. In another, she demands money from a neighbor for a minor scratch Bin suffers when playing with her son. Bin and Jin manage to find friendship, however, with a little handicapped boy and pass the time by capturing and roasting grasshoppers to sell on the streets to help fill their piggy bank. When they discover that they can exchange one large coin for many small ones, they are one step closer to what they believe will be their mother's return. When the bank is filled, the girls wait for their mother at the bus stop, losing faith with each bus that comes and goes without their mother. It is a heartbreaking scene that brings back memories of classic neorealist films of the past.
Optimism and inner strength surface again, however, when, after receiving a letter from the girls' mother, Big Aunt delivers them to their grandparents farm in the countryside. In their return to nature, they can at last breathe free and open themselves to the caring they so desperately need. Recruited through the director's observations of children at local Korean schools rather than through talent agencies, the performances of Hee Yeon Kim and Song Hee Kim are models of authenticity.
There is never any sense that they are simply acting or going through the motions. In the tradition of Koreeda's Nobody Knows, and Ozu's I Was Born But.., Treeless Mountain avoids histrionics or crowd pleasing sentimentality. It is a film about particular children but one that has universal appeal, touching everyone who has experienced the fear of abandonment at one time or another. That means all of us.