THE BEST-KNOWN KOREAN DIRECTOR WHO DOESN'T specialize in bloody revenge flicks, Bong Joon-ho has made four features notable more for their differences than their similarities. His most commercially successful film — both in Korea and the West — is The Host, a CGI-heavy monster movie with dashes of social commentary and anti-American politics. His upcoming project, which he is currently writing, is Snow-Piercer, a sci-fi film based on a French graphic novel. But he's also made several movies that don't rely on special effects, including his latest, Mother, a Hitchcockian tale of a mom who undertakes to prove her slow-witted son innocent of murder — even if he isn't. This range of subjects and styles seemed the logical place to begin a short interview with Bong, who came to the Ritz Carlton Georgetown in early March to promote Mother.

On the surface, my movies could be completely different. They are different genres, but the characters, the story patterns, and how I approach Korean society are all very similar. When it comes to directing, I don't necessarily follow the traditional movie genres. I tend to create another genre by destroying the ones that are out there. Maybe that could be the similarity among all my movies.

One thing your films all share is that their protagonists, from the tormented graduate student in Barking Dogs Never Bite to the mother and son in your latest movie, are outcasts or outsiders.

Whenever I write scenarios, I instinctively am drawn to outcasts. The weak, the powerless, the ones alienated from the mainstream. I always think about how to portray these individuals. I show them drawn into situations where they have no choice, where they have to do something, have to figure out something. But when you look at my films one by one, there is a clear difference in these characters. For example, Memories of Murder is about incapable police officers, and how they utterly fail. and in The Host, you see this family who could be typed as "losers," and how they're trying to fight through it. I really wanted to see how that family could be portrayed as a sacred group.

However, I do see Mother as pretty dark. You have this mother and son who are actually destroying one another. Compared to the two previous ones, this is darker. Overall, you can see my perspective on the weak, the alienated, and the outcast when you combine the major characters from all three of these films.

You've been careful to point out that your own mother has not killed anyone. [Bong laughs] But do you see this scenario as an exaggerated version of a more conventional mother-son relationship?

Yes. It's not a typical mother-son relationship. You can tell from the very beginning of the movie, when the mother is using the chopping board, and you see the blood on her finger. The point of the movie was to show how far a mother can go to save her son. And the anxiety of the relationship.

About halfway through the movie, there's a scene where the son recollects that, when he was 5 years old, his mother tried to poison him. The son has been suppressing this trauma all his life. And from that point on, the movie is a downward spiral.

From the film's early scenes, I was expecting another Memories of Murder. Both movies are set in a small town, and this one is another police procedural, except that the detective is the mother rather than a police officer. But as the film became more ironic, I began to think more of Barking Dogs Never Bite. It became funny, but in a very black way.

On the surface, there's a similarity between Mother and Barking Dogs Never Bite, but also with Memories of Murder. The latter two films are both set in small villages, as you have said, and you see the bumbling police officers. But Memories of Murder focuses more on the pain, the tragedy that came from societal forces. It's set in 1980s Korea, when there was political and social turmoil. Mother focuses more on internal conflict. It's more about an individual destroying another, or destroying him- or herself.

I do see a similarity between Barking Dogs and Mother. In the first one, a homeless character takes all the blame, and in Mother, the character with Down syndrome is accused, even though we know he's not guilty.

I was thinking more of the tone of the films. They both end up being rather ironic.

The miscommunication and misunderstanding in Barking Dogs plays out as comedy, where in Mother has the same aspects of irony, tragedy, and misunderstanding, but it plays out in a darker tone.

The actress who plays the central role, Kim Hye-ja, is known for traditional maternal roles in Korea. How did she inspire the creation of the film?

I decided to make this film because I wanted to work with her. When you look at her, she seems a little surreal, even a bit psychotic. She always portrays the kind, warm-hearted mother in Korea. She's done it for over 40 years, so she's an iconic figure. But I do see a darkness in her, an instability with her. When Kim Hye- ja first looked at the script, she said, "This is an animalistic relationship. The mother defending the baby against a predator."

And what was her reaction when you said you wanted to work with her because you see a psychotic quality in her?

Luckily, she was very pleased, and she was interested. She wanted to try something different. We met in 2004, when I first explained the script to her. I said, "I want to bring out, to explore, that sense of madness, that hysteria in you." And she was very willing to do that.

MOTHER — 2009; 129 min; at Landmark E Street and AMC Loews Shirlington.