New year, new mom, in Johnny Ma’s sweet and light comedy

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New year, new mom, in Johnny Ma’s sweet and light comedy

Johnny Ma’s The mother and the bear inaugurates the 2026 cinematographic program – and the next Lunar New Year, in February – with a sweet favorite in the vein of While you were sleeping. It’s been a long road for Ma’s film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2024but perhaps that’s just as well: its gentle, simple depiction of a Chinese mother and her Canadian immigrant daughter resembles the right, earnest opening salvo for a hopeful new beginning.

The mother and the bear is anchored by Kim Ho-jung’s performance as an overbearing parent whose matriarchal devotion borders dangerously obsessive. As single mother Sara, Ho-jung displays a charming childishness born of an over-reliance on her daughter’s love, combined with unresolved grief over the loss of her husband. Alone in China, Sara sacrifices a deeper understanding of herself out of unconditional – albeit paranoid – love for those close to her.

Mother and the Bear falls apart easily, even with its handful of trite tropes

Much to her confusion, Sara’s daughter Sumi (Leere Park) has moved to Winnipeg, where she braves the cruel winters and works as a piano teacher at a local children’s performing arts center. For some reason, their relationship is strained. Sara keeps leaving voicemails for Sumi, who apparently refuses to answer the phone. One day, after leaving work, Sumi follows a rat into a dark alley, where she is then surprised by what happens. sounds like a bear.

The noise is so sudden that Sumi trips and falls on her head, and by the time Sara arrives in Winnipeg to help her, Dr. Jennie (Samantha Kendrick) has very carefully put her into a medically induced coma. As would be the case for any parent, the revelation is terrifying for Sara – even though she is repeatedly told that there is virtually no danger of Sumi dying – and all it does is confirm Sara’s most ardent belief: Sumi needs a man to take care of her. This would never have happened if she had a husband.

As Sara walks around her daughter’s newly moved apartment, she slowly begins to understand who her daughter is, ironically without Sumi’s intervention. She meets her close friend and colleague, Amaya (Amara Pedroso), walks through the surrounding parks, and witnesses her daughter’s impact on the young children she mentors. But she is so upset by Sumi’s accident that she also makes a radical and morally questionable choice: she creates an online dating profile for herself and starts angling for a handsome Korean man.

At the same time as she’s trying to make someone fall in love with her daughter, Sara begins her own flirtation with the owner and proprietor of a nearby Korean restaurant, Seoul Kitchen. Sam (Lee Won-jae), is just as dedicated to perfecting kimchi as she is, is also single, and also has a child who stubbornly refuses to date the “right” person (aka Korean). In fact, this son is a man that Sara meets in a convenience store and who is dating Sumi’s doctor.

The chain of personal dynamics defies all rational belief. It may be that Ma is implicitly demonstrating the closeness of a diasporic community in an unlikely place – and that sometimes it’s easier to find a home away from home than where you came from in the first place – but logically it’s all a bit silly. It would be one thing if the film played out in the realm of magical realism, but it doesn’t (except for one decidedly strange moment near the end), so the auspicious way in which this woman finds herself in a spider’s web of complicated relationships threatens the film’s good timing.

But, above all, The mother and the bear is a tender film about self-discovery for a character who almost assumed the time for such a thing had passed. Ho-jung sets the bar for acting in 2026, and for the most part, his charm is enough to carry the film to its overly neat ending. It’s the kind of movie whose well-telegraphed revelations don’t matter, since, in a way, you’re here for the comfort of predictability. Less successful in this regard is Sara’s ignorance as she discovers the world of young people, as in the extremely banal and widely used joke that Sumi’s vibrator is actually a back massage toy.

When Ma focuses on the earthly journey of Sara’s fish-out-of-water story and the real chemistry between her and Sam, the film sings. Composer Marie-Hélène Leclerc-Delorme’s offbeat score emphasizes the alien tactility of trying to exist in a place you don’t want to be, and watching Ho-jung operate in these circumstances makes the film an endless, exhilarating adventure. As Sara continues the long, snowy path of her own journey, we hope that our new year, lunar or otherwise, will be as fruitful as hers.