At times slapstick horror, at other times pitch-black comedy, Parasite pits a poor but very ambitious family against their polar opposites.
South Korea
4*
Director:
Bong Joon-ho
Screenwriters:
Bong Joon-ho
Han Jin-won
Director of Photography:
Hong Kyung-pyo
Running time: 130 minutes
Original title: 기생충
Transliterated title: Gisaengchung
If looks could kill, a wrinkled nose would eviscerate. A stare can be ambiguous as to precisely what the objectionable feature is, but a wince of disgust signalled by a movement of the nose is as clear as day: The smell is simply unbearable. When the stench emanates from an individual who, in turn, notices the nauseated expression on the receiver’s face, shock and embarrassment inevitably follow. And in the case of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, all of this leads to a surprisingly poignant bloodbath.
Loosely referencing his entry in the three-part anthology feature, Tokyo!, Bong starts his film with pizza boxes. The boxes are piled from floor to ceiling in a grimy basement apartment in a South Korean metropolis where the lower-class – and, from the looks of it, blissfully unemployed – Kim family resides. The father, Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), used to be a chauffeur but is now the one folding most of the boxes, albeit not very well. His post-teenage children, who epitomise the term “parasite singles”, are still living at home. And both the children and the parents, who live together in bug-infested squalor and leave their tiny piss-stained windows open to profit off the free municipal fumigation at street level, rely on proximity to their presumably slightly better-off neighbours to mooch off their Wi-Fi. But such multifaceted parasitism is not enough for them.
Through the fortunes of circumstance, Ki-Taek’s son, baby-faced 20-something Ki-Woo (Choi Woo-shik), is handed a job as an English tutor to a teenage girl at her wealthy family’s mansion. In terms of the relative standards of living, the contrast with his own family home is stark, and he soon spots an opportunity to spread the wealth, as it were, by getting servants fired and replaced with his sister (posing as an arts teacher for gifted children), his father (the driver) and his mother (the housekeeper). Thus, before long, the entire Kim family has all but moved into the perfectly manicured, ultra-modernist and very spacious compound of Mr and Mrs Park, and when the upper-class owners decide to spend the weekend glamping at a retreat, the Kims make themselves at home.
While they work hard to manipulate the elites, the Kims are, above all, interested in having the ability to partake of their employers’ material wealth; to this end, however, they remain dependent on the Parks. They are indeed parasites, gorging themselves on their host, but they can only continue provided that they don’t die, the host doesn’t die, and they are not removed by force.
Around the halfway mark, things turn slightly more serious (and, unfortunately, the plot gets bogged down in meandering conversations) with a revelation about some unexpected previous occupants of the house who may have more cunning and perseverance than the current crop of employees. We are also made ever more acutely aware of how body odour is tied to class. The Kims, who cannot afford the same extravagant treatments as the Parks and do not have the luxury of moving in slow motion to avoid breaking a sweat, may as well have a neon sign above their heads that is constantly flashing “paupers”. There is something appealing about this struggle to rise above one’s circumstances, but the Kims’ increasingly violent ambition to climb the social ladder – and, more importantly, get their competitors booted from the rungs – makes it difficult to root for them.
Not that it was ever easy to be on their side. While the first act is full of energy, and we are constantly surprised by how easy it is for them to wrap the well-to-do but seemingly vapid Parks around their little finger, we do not exactly sympathise with either of the two families. The Kims are devious and scheming but also want a better life for themselves, while the Parks genuinely want to protect what is theirs but are living their life in a bubble isolated from the rest of society. The only true caricature is Mrs Park, whose shopping sprees, white Pomeranian and ennui-driven naps around the house provide ample fodder to view her as privileged and clueless, and each of her scenes is likely to elicit a good chuckle. A juxtaposition late in the film contrasts Mrs Park choosing dresses from her walk-in wardrobe with people at a shelter receiving clothes.
As the narrative unspools, director Bong turns up the dial on his social commentary, which peaks with an astonishing visual tour de force. Just as things seem to reach boiling point, a devastating rainstorm begins to rage. While Mr and Mrs Park lie on their living room couch and have sex as their young son plays in his colourful teepee in the garden, which is so lush it almost resembles a real forest, the lower-lying city, including the Kims’ basement apartment, falls victim to a flood of biblical proportions. As the downtown dwelling (and the screen) fills up with rising water, the perspective dissolves to an innovative divine point-of-view shot slowly floating high above a river of destruction in the heart of the city.
Bong Joon-ho is in full control of proceedings in Parasite, and although it may take a while to warm up to his particular brand of genre-bending hybridisation, the pay-off is deeply satisfying. Some may quibble with the two-hour-plus running time (or, more justifiably, the amount of time spent on the post-climax coda) or the lack of any real texture in the relationships among the members of the Kim family, but this opportunity to indulge in a socially conscious comedy with elements verging on horror should not be missed.