A poor family's and a rich family's lives unexpectedly intersect in this Best Picture Oscar-winning tragicomedy from South Korean auteur, Bong Joon-Ho (Okja).
"Ki-taek's family of four is close, but fully unemployed, with a bleak future ahead of them. The son Ki-woo is recommended by his friend, a student at a prestigious university, for a well-paid tutoring job, spawning hopes of a regular income. Carrying the expectations of all his family, Ki-woo heads to the Park family home for an interview. Arriving at the house of Mr. Park, the owner of a global IT firm, Ki-woo meets Yeon-kyo, the beautiful young lady of the house. But following this first meeting between the two families, an unstoppable string of mishaps lies in wait." (Cannes Film Festival)
On paper, Parasite may look a familiar beastie—chronicling the divide between haves and have-nots (hello, other films by director Bong Joon-ho), it’s a Palme d’Or-winning tale about a down-on-their-luck family, none of whom are averse to a scam (hi, last year’s Cannes winner Shoplifters). But surface similarities be damned, Parasite charts its own course, into some unexpected territory and burrowing right into your head.
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At the beginning of Parasite, the latest masterfully thrilling dissection of capitalism’s flaws from South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, the twentysomething brother and sister – Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) and Ki-jung (Park So-dam) – of a fiscally bereft South Korean family squeeze into a nook above their family’s cluttered bathroom with their phones, trying to scavenge free Wi-Fi. It is an apt introduction – cruel but everyday, more cheerful than grim – to a film that uses space, architecture, and the way it reflects circumstances and the resulting actions of people as a defining force. Bong, who used a progression of increasingly privileged train carriages as a metaphor for inequality in 2013’s Snowpiercer, is a masterful 21st century filmmaker: a subversive with a taste for genre, audacious in his shared implications.
Full reviewBong is back and on brilliant form, but he is unmistakably, roaringly furious, and it registers because the target is so deserving, so enormous, so 2019: "Parasite" is a tick fat with the bitter blood of class rage.
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You expect the whole enterprise to come crashing down around his ears, but this is a film-maker in total control of his craft.
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Parasite is a masterclass in writing and narrative control. That a film as funny, subversive and relevant as this can still win the Cannes Palme d'Ór makes me very happy indeed.
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As an escalating freak show of tension, surprise and class rage, "Parasite" would make a terrific double bill with Jordan Peele's "Us," which it matches and perhaps even surpasses in pact.
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Parasite is generally gripping and finely crafted, standing up well as Bong's most mature state-of-the-nation statement since Memories of Murder in 2003.
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