Parasite

I caught a screening of Bong Joon-ho's Palme d'Or winner, Parasite at the Innaloo Event Cinemas on Saturday night. This is a dark satire on class distinctions in modern day Korea, and more broadly, the world. It's weird, funny and shockingly brutal at times. The premise concerns a down-at-heel family of four living in a poor neighbourhood of Seoul, who suddenly get a break when a friend of the son passes a tutoring job onto him. Slowly, the whole family manoeuvre their way into this rich household and much of the bite comes from the way the two sets of families interact. Things take a pretty sharp deviation about halfway through the film, which raises the tension, as well as providing motivation for the themes of class and bigotry to come to the fore.

The Bong man is responsible for Snowpiercer and Okja, among other films, but from what I've seen, this is his best work. He gets some great performances from the likes of Jo Yeo-jeong as Yeon-kyo, the wealthy, easily-distracted mother and Song Kang-ho as Ki-taek, the father of the poor family. The sets and locations are superb also. Most of the film gravitates between the stark, modernist finery of the Park's house and the grubby, busy streets running into the sub-basement abode of the Kim family. This setting is a real feather in the cap of Parasite. It manages to look cool and miserable at the same time and there's a fantastic set-piece where Ki-taek and his two kids run home through a downpour to be caught in a sewage flood in their neighbourhood. Really great film making here, epitomised by the daughter, Ki-jung sitting on the shite-spewing toilet to have a smoke while the water rises around her.

Speaking of sewage, smell is an integral part of the film. The young rich kid tells his parents that the new staff all smell the same (and as they've entered the home 'unknown' to one another, this is potentially troubling). Mr. Park tells his wife that his new driver reeks, as "all people who ride the subway have a special smell." As Ki-taek hides under a table, Mr. Park muses that he can still smell him now. In fact, smell turns out to be a pivotal point in the bloody climax but I'll say no more on that front.

The dialogue is a particular treat. Ki-taek's wife, Chung-sook tells the family that she'd be nice like the Parks if she were rich, saying, "Money is an iron; it smooths out all the wrinkles." Ki-taek morosely tells his kids that it's best to do nothing and that having no plans means nothing can go wrong. The son, Ki-woo explains that his forged university degree is not fake, it's just early, as he plans to go to university one day.

Parasite pushes all the right buttons - equal parts vicious and sweet, funny and morose, hopeful and bereft. One of the best films of the year so far.

See also:

Park Chan-wook's vampire romance Thirst (2009), also starring Kang Ho-song and for thematic similarities to a recent film, Jordan Peele's Us (2019).

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Listen to "Parasite" on Spreaker.