PARASITE

Few national cinematic outputs in the modern era rival that of South Korea. The home of celebrated film-makers like Park Chan-wook, Lee Chang-dong, Kim Ki-duk and Hong Sangsoo is also now the home of a Palme D’or winner in Bong Joon-ho, who stole the hearts of the Cannes Film Festival Jury with his brilliant, beguiling morality tale Parasite. I’ll be honest, against his contemporaries in that list, Bong Joonho’s output has never been my favourite; the creator of heady concept-pieces like Snowpiercer and Okja has always bitten off a little more than he could chew to my mind, swinging between genres and tones wildly and often unsuccessfully. That said, Parasite clearly marks the maturation of a filmmaker, the arrival at a place of execution so assured that it can be comfortably referred to as masterful. Bearing glancing similarities to last year’s Palme winner Shoplifters, Parasite tells the story of a family living in poverty who luck into an opportunity for lucrative employment when Ki-woo, the son, takes up a job as tutor to the daughter of an extremely wealthy family. From there, things start to get a little strange in ways that to “spoil” would be to rob viewers of the fiendishly tense, thrilling roller coaster ride of betrayals, reveals and sudden acts of

violence.

Parasite benefits from crisp, rich cinematography, a deep back-bench of brilliant performers (both families, rich and poor, make lasting, impactful impressions, see-sawing between figures of sympathy and figures of utter contempt at any given moment), and a script of clockwork-like precision. Where once Bong Joon-ho’s tonal shifts felt jarring and at times unearned, here the filmmaker weaves between genres so smoothly as to make the seams nearly invisible — one moment we’re watching a kitchen-sink poverty drama, the next a con-artist caper, then a dread-soaked chamber horror. Bong Joon-ho’s work has not been known for its subtlety and here is no different, undoubtedly — and yet, Parasite’s clear real-world parallels feel unforced and invigorating. A clear-minded and entirely profound attack on the rotting, pervasive spectre of capitalism on South Korean society (pitched in a way that feels incredibly universal at this time), here Bong Joon-ho’s broadness, and his anger, feels totally earned. One of, if not the best film of the year so far, Parasite is a shocking must-see, a thrilling shot across the bow to a cinemascape filled with so much more-ofthe-same. Miss it at your own peril.