Treeless Mountain (Tuesday, November 17, 2009) (164)

Let's face it - there are so many small foreign films that it's easy to miss the very, very small ones. Treeless Mountain is one of those, which I saw a trailer for this spring, but then missed when it was briefly in theaters in New York. I just got the chance to see it on DVD - and I'm thrilled that I did.

From writer-director So Yong Kim, who also made the lovely In Between Days in 2007, comes this story about two little girls (about 6- and 4-years old) who are basically self-sufficient in a Korean city while their single mother struggles to make ends meet. Ultimately the mother gives the girls to their aunt while their mom goes off to find work and love elsewhere. The aunt is in worse financial shape than the mother, and she also is a drunk. She does not allow the girls to eat outside of the home, and frequently forgets to feed them when she comes back from a night out. The girls basically take care of themselves, starting a small business cooking grasshoppers as snacks for school kids.

What is really refreshing about this film, and about So Yong Kim's eye, is that it is very respectfully from the point of view of the girls. There are a lot of low-angle shots and the girls are almost always seen at their (short) level. We do not see them, for instance from an adult level, looking down over the top of their heads. This can be hard to do, I think. It's not condescending and not infantalizing either. It's very matter-of-fact. As with In Between Days, Kim has a beautiful natural-realist style that is very frank and appealing. The film has a poetic grittiness and a natural, sometimes dirty, look.

Child actors are almost always difficult to criticize. They're generally super cute (which is how they get the roles) and mostly don't have their acting chops developed yet. These two girls are very good and natural and do not overplay their sweet-ness too much.

Much of the film is about the two girls basically being bored to death as they wait for their adult supervisors to engage them. For most of the film, they are not in school, and have very minimal contact to the grown-up world. Still, I didn't find the film boring, rather it feels very careful and exact.

Again, this is a very small film. There might be 20 lines of dialogue in it total - most of the film is pretty quiet or silent. It's an atmospheric exercise and it is really pretty.

Stars: 3 of 4