Mother
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Bong Joon-ho
Written by	Bong Joon-ho Park Eun-kyo
Produced by	Choi Jae-won Seo Woo-sik
Starring	Kim Hye-ja Won Bin
Cinematography	Hong Kyung-pyo
Edited by	Moon Sae-kyung
Music by	Lee Byung-woo
Production companies	CJ Entertainment Barunson
Distributed by	CJ Entertainment (South Korea)
Release dates	16 May 2009 (2009-05-16) (Cannes) 28 May 2009 (2009-05-28) (South Korea)
Running time	128 minutes
Country	South Korea
Language	Korean
Budget	US$5 million
Box office	US$17.1 million[1]

Mother (Korean: 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 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. One day, he and Jin-tae go to a golf course to attack a group of golfers. Do-Joon steals several lost golf balls and writes his name on all of them. Jin-tae blames Do-joon for the damage done to one of the golfer's cars. Do-joon is sued and the debt puts Mother on struggle.

Do-joon goes out late at night, and 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, including one of the golf balls with his name. The police are happy with their cursory investigation and 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 and everyone refuses to believe her claims.

While visiting Do-joon in his cell, he says that Jin-tae was responsible for the damage done to the golfer's car earlier. This prompts her to go to Jin-tae's house, where she finds a golf club with a red stain which is supposedly blood. Video evidence shows that the red stain is actually lipstick. Jin-tae confronts her, and tells her that nobody should be trusted, not even himself, as Ah-jung's body was placed from a point where everyone in the town could see it. Mother then fires the lawyer.

Mother asks people around the town who knew Ah-jung, and they mention she was nicknamed, "the rice cake girl," and that she liked boys. They also mention that she was in a relationship with a boy known as "Crazy JP."

Do-joon is seen beating another prisoner who calls him "retard." Mother visits him about the matter, and tells him to think hard on what happened the night of the Ah-jung's death. Do-joon then 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. While walking in the rain, she accepts an umbrella from a junk collector.

Mother then requests to have a photo of a young Do-joon enlarged and reprinted. The photo worker says that she met Ah-jung with a friend to have some cellphone photos printed. She also says that Ah-jung had frequent nosebleeds. Mother meets this friend and learns that she programs cell phones to make no noise when taking pictures. The friend is then attacked by two boys who are looking for Ah-jung's phone, but Mother rescues her. She then pays a cop to interrogate the boys, who confess that Ah-jung used the phone to secretly take pictures of the boys she slept with. These boys all gave her rice cakes in exchange.

Mother goes to Ah-jung's grandmother and pays some money for the phone. Back in his cell, Do-joon remembers seeing a man in the building the night of Ah-jung's death. Do-joon identifies one of the pictures on Ah-jung's phone; that of a white-haired elderly man. Mother remembers the man as the junk collector she bought the umbrella from. She finds him in his home, claiming to be an acupuncture doctor, and asks him about what happened. The junk collector tells his story.

He says that he went into the abandoned building (presumably to meet with Ah-jung, already in a relationship as his picture was on her phone), and he saw a distraught Ah-jung followed by Do-joon. Do-joon curiously asks her questions, but she throws a rock at him and calls him "retard." Do-joon, instinctively attacking those who mock him, throws the rock back at her which hits her on the head, and drags her to the rooftop. Do-joon is the one responsible for Ah-jung's death, leaving Mother horrified.

When the junk collector learns that Do-joon will be released and the case will reopen, he decides to report that Do-joon is guilty. Mother, fearing for her son, beats the junk collector to death and burns his house down.

Sometime later, the police tell Mother that they found the "real" killer. He is Crazy JP, who had clothing with Ah-jung's blood on it. While it was possible the blood was from her nosebleeds, the police deduce that it was attempted rape. Feeling guilty, Mother goes to visit JP. She asks if he has any parents and cries for him, knowing he is charged for a crime he didn't commit.

Do-joon is freed from prison, and while he is being driven back home, he stops to investigate the junk collector's burnt house. During dinner with his Mother, he says that whoever dragged Ah-jung to the roof was probably trying to alert others so they could help her quickly. As Mother departs to a bus station to go on a trip, Do-joon shows her her acupuncture kit, which he found at the burnt site, and Mother tearfully leaves with it. On the bus, she gives herself acupuncture to forget her pain, and dances with the other passengers.

• Kim Hye-ja as Mother
• Won Bin as Do-joon
• Jin Goo as Jin-tae
• Yoon Je-moon as Je-moon
• Jeon Mi-seon as Mi-seon
• Song Sae-byeok as Detective
• Chun Woo-hee as Mi-na
• Kwak Do-won as Charcoal fire man
• Kim Jin-goo as Ah-jung's grandma
• Lee Young-suk as Elder at junk shop

Mother competed in the Un Certain Regard category at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.^[2] Mother attracted 3,003,785 admissions nationwide and grossed a total of US$16,283,879 in South Korea, becoming the 6th most attended domestic film of 2009, and 10th overall.^[3][4] The film had its U.S. premiere in February 2010 as part of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and received a limited U.S. theatrical release by Magnolia Pictures in March 2010.^[5] In March 2015 the film was re-released in the US, in the Pleasantville, New York based Jacob Burns Film Center, as part of the Bong Joon-ho Retrospective with The Host, Snowpiercer and Memories of Murder.^[6]

Mother received widespread acclaim from critics, who praised the director and Kim Hye-ja's performance.^[7] On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 95% based on 111 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "As fleshy as it is funny, Bong Joon-Ho's Mother straddles family drama, horror and comedy with a deft grasp of tone and plenty of eerie visuals."^[8] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100 based on 31 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[9]

Top ten lists

Mother appeared on many film critics' "best-of" lists of 2010.^[10]

The film was selected as South Korea's official submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards.^[16]

• Official website
• Mother at the Korean Movie Database (in Korean)
• Mother at IMDb
• Mother at HanCinema
• Mother at AllMovie
• Mother at Box Office Mojo
• Mother at Metacritic
• Mother at Rotten Tomatoes