Parasite: Bong Joon Ho tackles the one per cent in a gloriously amoral, darkly-funny fraud fable
By Jim Slotek
Rating: A
Winner of this year’s Cannes Palme D’or, Parasite, Bong Joon-ho’s gloriously amoral tale of an unscrupulous poor family that connives its way in the mansion of a rich, gullible clan, starts out very funny and ends up very dark.
Along the way, it’s been grouped in a spate of films, most often Joker, about the ravages of the one per cent, inequality and anger. But though they share a theme, Parasite is on another level, sure-handed and sly, with a moral compass that wavers as the tables turn.
Ki-jung and her brother Ki-woo finally find a “hot spot” for free Wi-Fi in their miserable apartment in Parasite.
Bong (Snowpiercer) has emerged as the most accomplished of this century’s terrific generation of South Korean filmmakers, with a keen sense of class divide and societal unfairness. If anything, Parasite’s protagonists, the Kim family, echo the also poor and enterprising family in his breakthrough monster movie The Host (Song Kang-ho who plays the lower-class patriarch here was a lay-about son who redeemed himself in the earlier film).
Though they maintain a feisty, acerbic humour, the Kim’s straits include a cramped life in a “semi-basement apartment” where a good day is one where they manage to steal wi-fi and get a piece-work gig folding pizza boxes. All are otherwise unemployed, though the son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) and the daughter Ki-jung (Park So-dam) are quick and intelligent (she’s a graphic arts wizard whose unemployment is the most confounding).
The pieces of the movie’s meticulously plotted scam begin to fall into place when Ki-woo’s friend Min, who attends a college Ki-woo couldn’t, announces over drinks that he’s moving to the U.S., and offers his friend his job tutoring English to the spoiled teen daughter of the wealthy Park family.
Of course, he’ll need fake credentials, which his sister happily supplies.
The Parks seemed designed as characters to make you wonder how the credulous and shallow can become so rich. The dad, Dong-ik (Lee Sun-kyun) is objectionable and arrogant and believes that poor have a specific “smell.” The mom, Yeon-kyo (Jo Yeo-jeong) is a social-climbing, sunny ditz. After Ki-woo is accepted by them, he encourages a crush by the daughter, and, one-by-one introduces his family members as unrelated candidates to be hired as family staff.
Sis poses as an art teacher, hired to help the emotionally troubled son. Mom becomes a maid, dad a chauffeur. (The previous holders of these jobs are framed to be fired for various offenses).
The Kims revel in their newfound surroundings (especially when the Parks are away). But the dark turn comes when it turns out they are not the only covetous shysters who’ve figured out that the Parks are an easy mark. The carefully woven plot soon unravels in an almost gratuitously violent last act.
The message amid the mayhem and comic timing is that there is a large, lumpen segment of society that is cut off from its spoils, from digital opportunities to fine whisky. Though it’s set in South Korea, the message is obviously universal (and as old as Hollywood, where rich bankers existed to be thwarted by the common-man likes of Jimmy Stewart).
Obviously, Bong delivers it with a twist, one that suggests there may be no non-violent way out of this angry disparity. As entertained as the audience is throughout, you don’t leave the theatre undisturbed.
Parasite. Directed and co-written by Bong Joon Ho. Starring Song Kang-ho, Choi Woo-sik and Park So-dam. Opens Friday at the Varsity Cinemas.