Treeless Mountain

Of the record number of foreign-language films the Maryland Film Festival screened this year, programmer Eric Allen Hatch said, "Treeless Mountain" may have the best chance of getting a wide release. That should be good news to anyone who didn't make it to the Sunday screening of this film by So Yong Kim.

In the film, a struggling single mother must leave her two daughters with their absent father's older sister. The girls -- the oldest is 6 and the younger one appears to be about 4 -- call her what the subtitles translate to "Big Aunt." While she's not in Spiker and Sponge territory as far as evil aunts go, she is neglectful and harsh most of the time. The child actors -- including one who plays a little boy the girls befriend -- are magnificent, and they are in nearly every scene, so that matters.

The low-key performances by the children remind me of Francois Truffaut's "Small Change," "The 400 Blows" and "The Wild Child."

There is, according to the festival program notes, an emerging South Korean cinema. But this is the first South Korean film I've ever had a chance to see. I was unable to make it to "Daytime Drinking," a comedy by Noh Young-seok, but the preview I saw for it reminded me of Martin Scorcese's "After Hours."