FILM OF THE WEEK
Parasite
Cert: 16; Selected cinemas
The surprise nomination in all this year’s awards has been South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. Co-written with Jin Won Han, it’s a dark, often funny, class tale that echoes internationally, leaving us wondering who, or what, exactly is the parasite of the title. Don’t let the subtitles put you off this clever, accessible, observation-rich film.
Kim Ki-Woo (Choi Woo-sik) is a young man from a poor family who describes himself as a loser. When his American friend leaves he gives him a stone carving that is meant to be a talisman and a way in to a better life. All Ki-Woo has to do is pretend to be middle class in order to become the English tutor to Da-hye, the daughter of the extremely wealthy Park family.
The gullible mother of the
Park family Yeon-kyo (Cho Yeo-jeong) is then easily persuaded that Ki-woo’s sister is really an art teacher called Jessica who can tap into the skills of her oddly-behaving young son. Within weeks the entire Kim family, mother, father, son and daughter are working for the Parks, pretending that they have never met before.
In order to complete this, they have to supplant long -serving housekeeper (Lee Jeong-eun) and this will prove problematic, leading ultimately to a violent conclusion.
The characters are all well-drawn and performed, the society with its profound inequalities all too familiar. Bong Joon-ho has described Korean youth as “in despair” and his film is one version of where that can lead. It is in many ways a morality tale, but it doesn’t pretend to offer answers, it just asks if apparently bad behaviour is the result of necessity, amorality or simple pragmatism. Is it a plot or just grabbing an opportunity? This is something embodied especially by the female characters. The story goes back and forth and the viewer is treated as an intelligent being so not everything is over explained. It is also heavy on the knowing metaphor and some things, it seems, are open to our interpretation.
I often complain of films being too long but this film, at two and a quarter hours, does not overstay its welcome and I would in fact happily watch it again.