Mother/Madeo

RAPIDLY EMERGING as a young titan, Bong Joon-ho, director of Memories of Murderand The Host, has a unique talent for meshing together apparently incongruous moods and styles.

The Korean director is at it again with this extraordinarily sinewy melodrama. The film has its moments of broad comedy: bad martial arts, classically stupid cops, absurdist traffic accidents. For much of its duration it works as a murder mystery. But the overriding theme is the consuming desperation and unreason that can result from unconditional love.

A mother's affection can be a terrible, terrible thing. Consider Rosalind Russell's ambitious harridan in Gypsyor Joan Crawford's title character in Mildred Pierce. Come to think of it, consider the character of Joan Crawford herself in Mommie Dearest. Family feeling can eat you alive.

The film follows an elderly mother as she strives to take care of her simple-minded son. In the opening scene, a car strikes the young man while he is making friends with a dog. He survives and is drawn into a feeble act of revenge against the drivers. Later, a girl is found dead in a rough area of town (in a typically odd Bong touch, the body is doubled-up over a ruined wall) and the lad is arrested for her murder. His mother (unnamed throughout) makes it her business to clear his name.

Despite his taste for changes of tone, Bong does an astonishing job of maintaining a steady sense of looming unease. Shot in wide- screen, featuring disconcertingly sweet melodies by Lee Byung-woo, Mother plays itself out in a series of poisonous greys and fetid browns that promise little chance of a jolly ending. Water leaking from a bottle towards a sleeping face rhymes with the brain matter that later spews from a hammered skull. Foolishness decays into madness.

Splendid as they all are, the cinematography, music, editing and sound design pale when put into contact with the teeth-jarring title performance by Kim Hye-ja. A classical actor of some note, Kim has somehow perfected the art of appearing simultaneously pathetic and fearsome. Of all Bong’s unlikely tonal mash-ups, this is the most impressive.