[1] Starring Kim Ho-jung as Sara, a woman from South Korea who flies to Canada after her daughter Sumi (Leere Park), who emigrated to Winnipeg some years earlier, is injured in a fall that has left her comatose, only to discover how much she didn't know about her daughter's life.
[2] The cast also includes Lee Won-jae, Jonathan Kim, Amara Pedroso, Samantha Kendrick and Susan Hanson.
[1] Ritesh Mehta of IndieWire graded the film a B, writing that "Any weaknesses lie more in the slightly tired general themes Ma explores.
The Mother and the Bear doesn't bring a lot of new material to the familiar narrative of parents becoming enlightened towards their child's sexuality.
Though perhaps that's an unfair comparison; maybe it's because we've chuckled alongside that CBC sitcom, or absorbed the pathos of intergenerational Asian journeys (towards the old country) in films like Return to Seoul and The Farewell, that we're able to better appreciate the subtle intermingling of comedy and drama that Ma and Kim bring about in The Mother and the Bear.