TIFF 08: Treeless Mountain

So Yong Kim and family in tow (producer/director co-editor Bradley Rust Gray and one person in a baby stroller) were on hand to showcase the world premiere of Treeless Mountain. Extrapolating the ache from the word ‘heart-ache’, Kim’s follow up to In Between Days, features a pair of sisters with plush doll features who aren’t commanded to give a downpour of facial gestures like the little girl in Ponette. One senses that the storyline device of a piggy bank getting filled to capacity will become the breaking point and change the overall dramatic structure of the portrait, instead, this little person conveys and dispels the sort of emotions that would come about when you’ve been shortchanged in life by having little parental guidance or sufficient mothering. An extremely well-calibrated picture that resembles some narrative ideas found in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows, I relate the drama to the coming-of age subgenre which is usually reserved to teen folk, except here, the pair have yet to lose their baby teeth. Tapping into issues of abandonment, the shot in Korea set family drama is as Kim announced contains some autobiographical truths, simply said — it’s a meditative, low key gem which has been on the IONCINEMA.com radar for a while now.