Johnny Ma’s The Mom and the Bear ushers within the 2026 cinema slate — and the upcoming Lunar New 12 months, in February — with a mild kick of the center within the vein of Whereas You Had been Sleeping. It has been an extended highway for Ma’s movie, which premiered on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition in 2024, however maybe that is simply as nicely: its candy and easy depiction of a Chinese language mom and her Canadian immigrant daughter feels just like the proper, earnest opening salvo for a hopeful new starting.
The Mom and the Bear is anchored by Kim Ho-jung’s efficiency as an overbearing father or mother whose matriarchal devotion borders on dangerously obsessive. As single mom Sara, Ho-jung demonstrates a captivating childishness borne out of an over-reliance on her daughter’s love, mixed with unresolved grief over the lack of her husband. Alone in China, Sara sacrifices a deeper understanding of herself out of unconditional – if paranoid – love for her kin.
The Mom and the Bear Goes Down Simple — Even With Its Handful of Trite Tropes
To her absolute confusion, Sara’s daughter, Sumi (Leere Park), has moved to Winnipeg, the place she braves the merciless winters and works as a piano trainer at a neighborhood performing arts heart for kids. For no matter purpose, their relationship is strained. Sara incessantly leaves voicemails for Sumi, who seemingly refuses to reply the telephone. After leaving work in the future, Sumi follows a rat right into a darkened alleyway, the place she subsequently is startled by what sounds like a bear.
The noise is so sudden that Sumi journeys and falls on her head, and, by the point Sara has arrived in Winnipeg to assist, Dr. Jennie (Samantha Kendrick) has put her in a medically-induced coma in an abundance of warning. As it could be for any father or mother, the revelation is terrifying for Sara — regardless that she is informed repeatedly that there’s basically no hazard of Sumi dying — and the entire thing simply confirms Sara’s most ardently held perception: Sumi wants a person to handle her. This may by no means have occurred if she had a husband.
As Sara putzes round her daughter’s newly moved-in residence, she slowly begins to know who her daughter is, satirically with out Sumi’s enter. She meets her shut good friend and coworker, Amaya (Amara Pedroso), wanders across the surrounding parks, and witnesses her daughter’s influence on the younger youngsters she mentors. However so distraught is she by Sumi’s accident that she additionally makes a sure drastic, and morally doubtful, alternative: she creates a web-based courting profile for her and begins to catfish a good-looking Korean man.
On the identical time that she tries to make somebody fall in love along with her daughter, Sara begins her personal flirtation with the proprietor and proprietor of a close-by Korean restaurant, Seoul Kitchen. Sam (Lee Gained-jae), is simply as dedicated to perfecting kimchi as she is, can be single, and likewise has a toddler that stubbornly refuses so far the “proper” (aka Korean) particular person. In actual fact, that son is a person that Sara runs into at a mini-mart, who occurs to be courting Sumi’s physician.
The chain of private dynamics defies rational perception. It might be that Ma is implicitly demonstrating the tightness of a diasporic neighborhood in an unlikely place — and the way it’s typically simpler to discover a dwelling away from dwelling than the place you got here from within the first place — however logically, it is all a bit foolish. It would be one factor if the movie performed within the realm of magical realism, but it surely would not (save for one, decidedly odd second close to the tip), so the auspicious method that this girl finds herself in a spider-web of sophisticated relationships threatens the movie’s good time.
However, largely, The Mom and the Bear is a young film about self-discovery for a personality who has all however assumed the time for such a factor has handed. Ho-jung units an early, sky-high bar for performing in 2026, and for probably the most half, her attraction is sufficient to carry the film to its overly tidy finish. That is the form of movie whose well-telegraphed revelations hardly matter, since, in a method, you are right here for the consolation of predictability. Much less profitable on this regard is the cluelessness of Sara as she discovers the world of younger individuals, as within the extraordinarily trite, well-trodden joke of assuming Sumi’s vibrator is definitely a toy for again massaging.
When Ma focuses on the grounded journey of Sara’s fish-out-of-water story and the real chemistry between her and Sam, the movie sings. Composer Marie-Hélène Leclerc-Delorme’s off-kilter rating emphasizes the alien-like tactility of attempting to exist in a spot you did not need to be in, and watching Ho-jung function in these circumstances makes the movie an endlessly breezy, uplifting experience. As Sara continues down the lengthy, snow-covered highway of her personal journey, here is hoping our new yr, lunar or in any other case, is as fruitful as hers.
The Mom and the Bear opens in choose American cities on January 2nd, and in Canada on January ninth.
The Mom and the Bear
6/10
- Launch Date
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April 30, 2024
- Runtime
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11 minutes
- Director
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Johnny Ma
- Writers
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Johnny Ma
- Producers
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Amal Ramsis
