August 30, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Mo Hong-jin
Vietnamese and Korean with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in Vietnam and in South Korea, the dramatic film “Leaving Mom” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A financially struggling Vietnamese street barber is the caregiver for his mother, who has dementia, and they eventually travel to South Korea to find the older son whom she left behind to live with other relatives more than 30 years earlier.
Culture Audience: “Leaving Mom” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and emotionally moving dramas about family caregivers and looking for long-lost relatives.
“Leaving Mom” can get a little overstuffed with its two major storylines about caregiving for a parent with dementia and looking for a long-lost family member. However, this drama has very good performances, even if some of the scenes veer into triteness. The outcome of this family search might be divisive to people who see the movie, but at least this outcome is not predictable.
Written and directed by Mo Hong-jin, “Leaving Mom” is told in non-chronological order. The flashback scenes in the movie (which go back to more than 30 years before the present-day part of the story) might be a little confusing at first. However, the circumstances of each flashback are eventually explained through conversations that the characters have in the story. “Leaving Mom” is also a rare movie that shows a family that has cross-cultural heritage in Vietnam and in South Korea.
The two central characters in “Leaving Mom” are a 29-year-old street barber named Hoan (played by Tuan Tran) and his mother Lê Thị Hanh (played by Hong Dao), who are financially poor and who live together in an unnamed city in Vietnam. Hanh has late-stage Alzheimer’s disease. The biological father of Hoan is not seen or mentioned in the movie. It’s implied that Hanh raised Hoan as a single parent.
Hoan, who is a never-married bachelor with no children, can’t afford to place Hanh in a private nursing facility. He doesn’t want to put her in a government-operated facility, where he fears that Hanh would be neglected and/or abused. Hoan has his own health issues: He has epilepsy, which usually gets triggered when he is in a stressful situation.
The movie’s opening scene is shown from Hanh’s perspective. She is in a dingy apartment, with her legs and arms tied by rope to a chair. She thinks she has been kidnapped. She’s very hungry and asks the man who comes into the room if she can have something to eat.
The “kidnapper” is actually Hoan, who has to tie up his mother when he has to leave her alone in the apartment, so that she doesn’t wander off or accidentally hurt herself. Hoan has returned to the apartment and unties the ropes so that Hanh can eat. Hanh eats like someone who doesn’t remember how to use utensils.
Hanh’s memories fade in and out about Hoan’s real identity. Sometimes she calls him Mister Captor. Sometimes she calls him Mister Police Officer, based on memories of her older son Ji-hwan telling her a child that he wanted to be a police officer.
Hanh has not seen Ji-hwan for more than 30 years, since he was about 5 or 6 years old (played by an absolutely adorable Bae Yeon-woo), when she left him to live with her deceased husband’s married brother in South Korea. Hanh reluctantly moved back to Vietnam, under the pressure from her late husband’s mother, who felt that Ji-hwan would be better off being raised by a financially stable married couple instead of a financially unstable widow. Very little is told in the movie about Hanh’s life after she moved back to Vietnam in her pre-dementia years.
Hoan, who uses a bicycle cart for transportation, almost always takes Hanh with him when he has to work. He has a small circle of friends that include Chau (played by Lâm Vỹ Dạ) and Tuan (played by Quốc Khanh), a married couple who own an operate a small outdoor food stand; a macho guy named Minh (played by Vinh Râu); and a transgender woman named Anh Dung (played by Đào Hải Triều).
All of these friends have different opinions on whether or not Hoan should find Ji-hwan so that she can live with Ji-hwan in South Korea, which Hoan thinks has better and more affordable health care for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Hoan is certain that Ji-hwan would be able to afford this health care for Hanh. Chau and Tuan think it’s a good idea, while Minh and Anh Dung are skeptical and discourage Hoan from relocating Hanh from Vietnam to South Korea.
There’s another reason why Hoan thinks going to South Korea will be better for Hanh’s health. She’s been heartbroken over having to leave Ji-hwan behind. Hoan takes on the responsibility of finding Ji-hwan and has to rely on what Hanh told him from her memories before she had dementia.
Flashbacks show a young Hanh (played by Juliet Bảo Ngọc), when she was a Vietnamese immigrant in South Korea and happily married to a South Korean businessman named Kim Jeon-min (played by Jung Il-woo), who was a devoted husband and father. These flashbacks reveal what Hanh’s life was like before Hoan was born and the tragedy that led to her leaving Ji-hwan in South Korea. The tragedy caused Hanh to feel a lot of guilt, which is another reason why she was convinced that she should move back to Vietnam.
Before the tragedy, Hanh was a vibrant woman who loved to play acoustic guitar. This type of guitar becomes a symbol of her past life in South Korea, long before she had dementia. If there’s anything missing from these flashbacks, it’s a depiction of Hoan’s childhood.
Some of the scenes in “Leaving Mom” are a bit repetitive and make their point the first time and didn’t need be repeated. For example, there are multiple scenes of Hanh smearing her feces on the apartment walls or references to Hanh having to use a bucket for her body waste when she is tied to a chair. These scenes might be too gross for some viewers to watch, but it’s a realistic depiction of the unpleasant realities of many people who have dementia.
“Leaving Mom” tends to wander and drag in the middle section of the movie. And it takes a little too long in the film before Hoan and Hanh finally go to South Korea. However, Hong and Tuan give unforgettable and impactful performances as a mother and a son who experience difficulties because of health issues but have ways of finding strength in each other.
Eastern Edge Films released “Leaving Mom” in select U.S. cinemas on August 28, 2025. The movie was released in Vietnam on July 30, 2025.
