GISAENGCHUNG / PARASITE
BONG Joon Ho — SOUTH KOREA — 132 minutes
IN A NUTSHELL
An impoverished Korean family, burdened by debt and poverty, live in a subbasement seeking a way out of their lives. Their chance for a way out comes when their son, Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), scams his way into a job tutoring the daughter of a well-off family in a well-appointed house. Bong’s latest film deals with the concept of social class structure in the form of a chilling home invasion film. (words by Bianca Garner)
CRITICAL RESPONSE
“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. The performances are uniformly solid, with special credit due to the child and teen actors.” — Stephen Dalton, The Hollywood Reporter
“The director refers to his furious and fiendishly well-crafted new film as a “family tragicomedy,” but the best thing about “Parasite” is that it gives us permission to stop trying to sort his movies into any sort of pre-existing taxonomy — with “Parasite,” Bong finally becomes a genre unto himself.” — David Ehrlich, IndieWire
“There is a licensed transgression in servitude, and this transgression is nightmarishly amplified when it is a question of a entire family seeking to get up close and personal. It is almost a supernatural or sci-fi story; an invasion of the lifestyle snatchers. Parasite gets its tendrils into you.” — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
PRIZE PROSPECTS
You only have to scan across this year’s entries in the Cannes competition line-up, to know how mouth-watering the choices would be were there a Cinematography prize. Bong Joon-ho’s latest flick, Parasite, might well have been the favourite, given how accomplished it is in other elements of filmmaking, beyond many of those it is competing with. Already zapping its audience with the seeming guarantee of a prize come Saturday night.
It is hard not to imagine that the Jury won’t be able to resist this, especially given the divide in this year’s official selection appears to be a lot clearer in those that will and those that won’t win something. The comparison strands to last year’s Palme d’Or winner, Shoplifters, is both obvious and a salute to the excellent state of Asian cinema. If Parasite doesn’t grab one of the top three prizes, then that it likely because Bong (you know, the guy that made Memoirs of Murder, The Host, Snowpiercer, Okja) has already claimed the Best Director prize. (words by Robin Write)
