Razor-sharp, gruesome and unmissable

Parasite (15) Verdict: Satire of the year

THE South Korean masterpiece Parasite is not the first foreign-language film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. But it would be the first to win — and it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that, on Sunday, it will.

Director Bong Joon-ho already has the Cannes Film Festival’s coveted Palme d’Or to show for what is undoubtedly one of the finest films, in any language, of the past 12 months.

Parasite is a story of complacent, spoilt haves and sly, guileful have-nots. The Kim family — mother, father, grown-up son and daughter — live on the breadline in a squalid basement, folding pizza boxes to, as it were, earn a crust.

Then the son is offered a job as an English tutor to the teenage daughter of an extremely wealthy family, who live in sleek, modern luxury. His sister has to fake his qualifications.

Once the rich family has accepted him, he persuades them that their unruly little boy could do with an art teacher. Soon, his sister has a job, followed, after some unscrupulous jiggery-pokery, by their mother and father, without their employers knowing any of them are related.

But before the Kims can make their next devious move, Bong springs a rather gruesome surprise, and the film takes a darker turn. That’s the brilliance of it — it combines razor-sharp social satire and pure knockabout farce with thriller and even horror elements.

It’s so cleverly constructed — and that includes the title, because by the end we’re not sure whether the parasites are the poor leeching off the rich, or the rich exploiting the poor. Don’t be put off by the subtitles. It’s unmissable.