Treeless Mountain

Part of what the New York Times referred to as “New NeoRealism,” So Yong Kim’s ( In Between Days ) sophomore feature is a quiet, powerful human drama about a six year old girl and her little sister. At a loss to support them, their harried mother leaves the girls in search of their father. Sadly, their temporary caregivers border Dickensian. Arthouse patronage should be an easy sell for a film as breathtaking as this, but with subtitles as a limitation, smartly targeted marketing should help the bottom lines. The moment word of mouth starts on this one, there’s really no telling how high the ceiling can go.

Even before her strengths are tested you sense Jin (Hee-yeon Kim) is wise beyond her years. Though her mother treats her warmly, Jin brings home accolades only to be reminded of her mistakes. “I got 100% on my homework” is returned with a gentle “Did you pick your sister up late? Do I have to tell you again?” Jin’s sister Bin (Song-hee Kim) is probably no older than 4, and her toddler-esque abandon is met with Jin’s near-parental concern. In avoidance of sending her girls to stay with their Grandparents on the family farm, Mother sends the girls to their callous and alcoholic “Big Aunt,” who intermittently neglects them and uses the girls to extort money from her neighbors. After a hard summer, Mother sends a letter regretfully informing Big Aunt that things with the father aren’t going well and the kids have to go to their Grandparent’s farm. Abandoned again, the girls are warmly welcomed by their wise old Grandmother, whose hard work and selflessness comfort Bin and offers Jin a feeling of well overdue hope. Maturity comes too young to these girls, Jin especially, but it’s a beautiful thing to see life go on.

Writer/director So Yong Kim trains her camera on the young actresses in such constant close-up we immediately feel as trapped as a child and similarly as aware. Grasshoppers, a local food that becomes a momentary business enterprise for the girls, are poetically skewered and roasted over a tiny fire, and all using a macro view that’s sharply focused in the center of the frame while the outskirts of the image blur. That brand of pinpoint clarity floating in an unspecified haze feels so true to the poignant and often cruel details of young discovery; so too do the details of these girls lives read with the resonance and mystery of childhood. It’s always clear what their elders are doing, which makes it all the more daunting when said elders obscure their selfishness or lie to save the girls stress.

After seeing Treeless Mountain and being re-confronted with the tumult most of us left at puberty, hearing that the filmmakers found their 4 year old actress Bin in an orphanage provokes a sort of Cider-House-Rules -life-is-unfair-and- Annie -is-a-cruel-lie feeling of trauma. These girls are instantly lovable and promptly fascinating. I walked out of the screening wanting to hug whosever’s path I crossed. It’s the sort of “slice of life” that defies words, which is perhaps why these little girls and their overwhelmingly grey world are rendered in such quietude. Silence thereafter becomes our mysterious indicator of growth, and, therefore lightness.

Distributor: Oscilloscope
Cast: Hee-yeon Kim, Song-hee Kim, Soo-ah Lee and Mi-hyang Kim
Director/Screenwriter: So Yong Kim
Producers: Bradley Rust Ray, Ben Howe, Lars Knudsen, Jay Van Hoy and So Yong Kim
Genre: Drama; Korean-language, subtitled
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 89 min
Release date: April 22 NY, May 8 LA/SF