Treeless Mountain

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ****½

Each year there are a handful of new "coming of age" movies, and they all seem based more on memories of movies than on memories of life. But So Yong Kim's new Treeless Mountain, from South Korea, takes extraordinary steps to climb out of that rut and place these movies back into the eyes of children. Her simple technique is to film her heroines, six-year-old Jin (Hee-Yeon Kim) and four-year-old Bin (Song-Hee Kim), mainly in close-up. The adult world is cut off, forever just outside the frame, out of reach and beyond understanding. These adults behave strangely and often badly, but we -- like the girls -- have no idea why.

It begins as Jin and Bin's mother prepares for some kind of trip, presumably an attempt to patch things up with the girls' father, and dropping them off at their aunt's. The aunt (Mi-hyang Kim) is stern and sometimes drunk, but not without her nice moments. The mother tells the girls that she'll return when their piggy bank is full. So the girls begin selling roasted grasshoppers for spare change. (Later, they discover an even cleverer scheme to fill up the bank faster.) Their hope rarely dwindles, yet when the aunt -- in a fit of frustration and disgust -- threatens to send them to "grandma and grandpa's farm," it's all too clear that the threat will eventually come true. Yet what happens there is quite unexpected. The big payoff moment is so small and passes so quietly that it's almost unbearably beautiful.

Director Kim {In Between Days) does occasionally resort to Hollywood-like plot developments, but she eases them into the story as uneventful parts of the organic flow, rather than story-turning plot-points. The plot exists at the service of the film, rather than the other way around, and it miraculously avoids sentimentality. She gets remarkably naturalistic performances from the young girls; they're not precious or trained (or lobbying for singing careers), and her use of hardscrabble landscapes is quietly effective; it works both to imprison the girls and to free them (as when they plant the tree that negates the title).

Oscilloscope released this wonderful 2009 film to DVD, with environmentally friendly packaging, and a commentary track by director So Yong Kim and producer Bradley Gray (in English). Other extras include deleted scenes, outtakes, an interview, and a post-screening, on-stage Q&A with the filmmakers.