Minimalist is a word that comes to mind here. Treeless Mountain's barely-there plot of two young girls abandoned by their mother comes second to the natural performances on show. The performances, however, aren't enough to save this rather boring drama.
Set in Seoul, South Korea, Treeless Mountain follows two young sisters - six-year-old Jin (Hee-yeon Kim) and three-year-old Bin (Song-hee Kim) - as they are left in the care of the grouchy, alcoholic aunt (Mi-hyang Kim) when their mother (Soo-ah Lee) leaves in search of reconciliation with their father. Told that their mother will return when their piggy bank is full, the two girls go about scraping together as much coin as they can by doing chores around the house and catching, cooking and then selling grasshoppers to the kids in the neighbourhood. They wait at the bus stop for their mother every day without fail but when their self-serving aunt can't deal with bringing up the girls anymore, they are forced to move again...
Minimalist is another way of saying that not a lot happens. Scratch that - nothing happens in Treeless Mountain. The kids doss about the neighbourhood, play with the kid next door, go to sleep, wait at the bus stop, etc. It's a novel idea to make a film solely from child's point of view; So Yong Kim keeps the camera at the height of a six-year-old child (think the opening sequence to ET where the adults are shot at waist-height) and loses itself in that world. Adults are shown to be aloof figures, ignoring the plight of the children who are privy to only snatches of conversation between their elders and are too young to piece together what is happening. It's left to the audience to fill in the gaps. And there are plenty of those.
So Yong Kim's best work is not in the film. How she made these two young actresses - real life sisters - so at ease, so natural, is a special skill and the director must have the patience of a saint. However, like a relative who won't stop banging on about their child, Treeless Mountain's charms wear thin after a while. Watching two children do nothing for an hour-and-a-half can be tiresome, and once boredom kicks in Treeless Mountain has nothing to up the ante.
