'MONGRELS' REVIEW: Jerome Yoo's Emotionally Stirring Family-Immigrant Story In Dream Focus [4/5]
This Is A Filmmaker in Lock-Step with His Creative Vision of British Columbia
[Rating 4/5] - dir. Jerome Yoo - 2024 - Canada - 14A - 1h 51m - Drama
This is a filmmaker in lock-step with his creative vision of British Columbia.
Korean-Canadian writer-director Jerome Yoo calls Vancouver home, and he has a masterful eye for capturing its true essences (some synopses say “Prairies” but frankly I don’t see that at all).
1. Visually
Modest bungalows seemingly decorated three decades prior are claustrophobic, less idyllic. Moss-covered, woozy, sunlit woods are left mostly to serve as the place in which one’s mind wanders best. A peculiar grey in the corners threatens to permeate everything.
2. Plot
Mongrels examines a Korean immigrant family, new-ish to Canada, reeling from the death of the wife/mother/matriarch, uncertain of how its new home perceives them and how they perceive it, if traditional values can survive culture change, and wondering they’ll find solid, peaceful ground again, if ever.
Yoo has a satisfyingly Spielbergian sense of family and how to exhibit its complexities on film. He creates stunning displays of childlike wonder and play. A sequence late in the film featuring a brief parade of sorts feels uniquely sweetly inspired. He gets tender, suitably subtle performances from his leads. There is a consistent, comforting sentimentality, even around its tensest or harshest (if brief) conflicts.
The only aspects of Mongrels that aren’t truly brilliant are its occasionally sluggish pacing and its on-the-nose presentation of what it’s implying about class and race.
But.
It has a heart that beats loud, and it’s easy to love.
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P.S. Yoo now owns a spot next to Ben Petrie and Grace Glowicki on my list of most engrossing young Canadian filmmakers.
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Mongrels will be available at a later date. It is in the middle of its festival run.
Selected Movie Quote: “It must be nice to dream forever.”
[Rating 4/5] - dir. Jerome Yoo - 2024 - Canada - 14A - 1h 51m - Drama