The Kids Will Be Alright
by Nicolas Rapold
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- Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories
Treeless Mountain
Directed by So Yong Kim
Turning her camera on children after the teenage muzziness of In Between Days, director So Yong Kim pulls off an extraordinary balancing act in the affecting Treeless Mountain. Pensive seven-year-old Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and her wide-smiled kid sister Bin (Song Hee Kim) are abruptly deposited with their aunt outside the city; their lovelorn mother leaves with a heartbreakingly transparent promise to return. Building on bereft-moppet cinema from The Children Are Watching Us through avowed influence Nobody Knows, yet distinct, the optimistic Treeless gets at a child’s mix of indiscriminate and limited perspective by porting perceptive moments through fleet behavioral scene-making. And considering Bin sports an adorable princess outfit throughout, the sisters’ making do with their odd hard-bitten aunt comes off as less precious or woebegone than you’d expect, even with the occasional stock-feeling situation (e.g., buttonholing a stranger to phone Mom).
Aiming for this story of these children rather than of childhood generally, Kim succeeds at rendering a close-up youngster-scale perspective: not just the little-project industry of small hands but also the stillness of their neighborhood’s streets, walls, and critter corners. True to her oft-cited inspirational conceit of two kids on a hill, some long shots have the clean figure compositions of traditional landscapes (fulfilling the title’s Eastern-poetic compactness), which feel warmer with a final move to the open air of their grandparents’ farm. Yet some of the most impressive work done here goes on behind the scenery: the extracting and stitching together involved in assembling a coached performance, even by kids with presence like these (especially in comparison to, say, the nonpro work that helps sink contemporary Ramin Bahrani).
Opens April 22 at Film Forum
Directed by So Yong Kim
Turning her camera on children after the teenage muzziness of In Between Days, director So Yong Kim pulls off an extraordinary balancing act in the affecting Treeless Mountain. Pensive seven-year-old Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and her wide-smiled kid sister Bin (Song Hee Kim) are abruptly deposited with their aunt outside the city; their lovelorn mother leaves with a heartbreakingly transparent promise to return. Building on bereft-moppet cinema from The Children Are Watching Us through avowed influence Nobody Knows, yet distinct, the optimistic Treeless gets at a child’s mix of indiscriminate and limited perspective by porting perceptive moments through fleet behavioral scene-making. And considering Bin sports an adorable princess outfit throughout, the sisters’ making do with their odd hard-bitten aunt comes off as less precious or woebegone than you’d expect, even with the occasional stock-feeling situation (e.g., buttonholing a stranger to phone Mom).
Aiming for this story of these children rather than of childhood generally, Kim succeeds at rendering a close-up youngster-scale perspective: not just the little-project industry of small hands but also the stillness of their neighborhood’s streets, walls, and critter corners. True to her oft-cited inspirational conceit of two kids on a hill, some long shots have the clean figure compositions of traditional landscapes (fulfilling the title’s Eastern-poetic compactness), which feel warmer with a final move to the open air of their grandparents’ farm. Yet some of the most impressive work done here goes on behind the scenery: the extracting and stitching together involved in assembling a coached performance, even by kids with presence like these (especially in comparison to, say, the nonpro work that helps sink contemporary Ramin Bahrani).
Opens April 22 at Film Forum
