Parents always want the best for their children, but they may not always know what their children need — this is the lesson of The Mother and the Bear. Filmed in Winnipeg and released last month, this movie is a drama comedy about the relationship between a comatose daughter and her mother.
In the film, Sumi, a piano teacher from South Korea, slips and hits her head on a snowy pavement in Winnipeg, causing her to be put in a medically induced coma. Her meddling and doting mother, Sara, flies to Winnipeg from Seoul after hearing the news, and concludes that Sumi desperately needs a husband to take care of her. To accomplish this, Sara impersonates her daughter on a dating app and eventually finds Min, a young, attractive Korean-Canadian man.
However, Sara later finds out that Min’s profile is a catfish, created by his father to sabotage his son’s interracial relationship with a white woman. It is also revealed to her that Sumi is in a secret relationship with a female coworker. Sara, distraught, is forced to look inward and re-evaluate herself as a mother.
Both the writing and acting (Kim Ho-jung) perfectly captured Sara as a ditzy but well-meaning Asian mother. For example, after not finding any food in Sumi’s apartment, Sara buys heads of cabbage to make kimchi for her daughter in the bathtub. Her inappropriate antics with men on the dating app also firmly put the film in the realm of cringe comedy.
Despite the laughs, Sara’s character is complex. She is a widow who runs a guesthouse in Korea, and Sumi is shown to repeatedly ignore her messages before the coma. Sara shows love the best way she knows how (by being an overbearing mother), but she changes her ways once she realizes Sumi needs space to be an adult.
In the end, Sara encourages Min’s father to accept his son’s partner. She leaves Winnipeg before Sumi wakes up from the coma to let her celebrate Lunar New Year with her partner, only leaving behind a voicemail and a fridge filled with homemade kimchi.
Apart from the heartwarming mother-daughter story, The Mother and the Bear touches on an underexplored facet of an immigrant’s experience in Winnipeg — their family’s reaction. Sara is bewildered as to why her daughter would want to live in faraway Winnipeg, and calls it an awful place after experiencing the frigid prairie winter and grimy inner city.
However, as she spends time in the city, she meets people who do not hesitate to help and care for each other. As someone who, like Sumi, moved across the Pacific to Winnipeg on their own and was met with disapproval for it, this story hit close to home for me.
Moreover, many of the scenes were filmed in Downtown Winnipeg and the Exchange District, and Winnipeggers will have no trouble recognizing the filming locations — a fun bonus for locals who like film tourism.
The Mother and the Bear is a poignant coming-of-age story of a mother. Equally comedic and profound, it shows that sometimes, the greatest act of love a parent can give to their child is to just let them be.
