Stoicism and desperation in So Yong Kim’s tale of abandoned young girls. By TIM WONG.

THE DARDENNE brothers, a semi-permanent fixture of recent New Zealand International Film Festivals, may not have graced us with their presence this year, but their resolute style continues to be felt. In Wendy and Lucy, the brother’s empathy for the underclass has clearly rubbed off on Kelly Reichardt’s film, a seriously aching tale of tough times in Middle America. In Treeless Mountain, another ordeal of sacrifice through hardship, the camera hovers over its motherless ducklings like a guardian angel, never deserting their innocent faces. Although recalling the stony naturalism of the Dardenne’s handheld aesthetic, director So Yong Kim (In Between Days) and her cinematographer, Anne Misawa, lock eyes with their two child stars (Hee Yeon Kim and Song Hee Kim), and with an invisible hand, don’t let go. The compassion expressed through this unwavering, unobtrusive lens is remarkable.

Abandoned by a mother who can no longer afford to support her daughters (and has fled in search of an estranged husband), sisters Jin and Bin are taken into temporary custody by their aunt, although for the most part end up fending for themselves. Where Treeless Mountain differs from the equally poignant Nobody Knows is that it evolves without a hint of sentimentality or a telegraphed outcome. Hirozaku Kore-eda’s film was, of course, an achievement in child performance too, and even if its foregone conclusion wrung its quiet stoicism into an overwhelmingly tragic (although where credit’s due, finally hopeful) affair, the understated pathos of Nobody Knows has not gone unnoticed by Kim. Devastation and despair creep into her film – as they do latently in Kore-eda’s new drama, the deceptively inviting Still Walking – but if the potential for melodrama seems always just around the corner, never once does it cave in. Further evidence that the realities of an economic downturn have entered into the consciousness of filmmakers, Treeless Mountain and Wendy and Lucy are clouded in gloom, but like the forecast of depression that we avoid at our own peril, are films too good to be ignored.