A brilliant, bang hit hit – Variety



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A laughter turns into a squeak that gets stuck in the throat like a sob – or an arrow in the neck – during Bong Joon-ho's last frantic run, "Parasite." On paper, this might not seem so different from the experience of watching Bong's "Snowpiercer", "Memories of Murder", "The Host" or "Okja". The deceptive god of Korea is best known for his unassuming film, which will run down the stairs of the genre – comedy, horror, drama, social comment, slasher, creature feature, mystery murder, manifest for vegetarianism – en route. But while "Parasite" certainly travels more than half that list, the laugh is darker, the roar more vicious and the sobs more desperate than ever before. Bong is back in a brilliant form, but he is undeniably roaring and furious. It's recording because the target is so deserving, so huge, so 2019: "Parasite" is a tick fat with the bitter blood of class rage.

It does not start like that. With a typical feint and dexterity dexterity, the film begins as an almost conscious Korean retouch of last year's Golden Palm winner, "Shoplifters". Here too, we have a grueling but loving family of dubious extremes in poverty-stricken circumstances, and a patriarch (Song Kang-ho) who funfully burst with pride even at the most marginal exploits of his children. "Does Oxford have a counterfeit course?", He asks with admiration at the false qualification his daughter Ki-Jung (Park So-dam) has gathered for his brother Ki-woo (Choi Woo- shik).

In their sordid "half-basement" (two wet rooms with a small window strip against which drunken men are incarcerated to urinate), the four members of this family, including their mother, the former champion of put on weight, Chung-sook (Chang Hyae-jin) is struggling to find mediocre jobs in the economy sector and an unlocked wifi signal. But then, Ki-woo is offered the opportunity to replace a friend as a guardian of Da-hye (Jung Ziso), daughter of the wealthy Mr. Park (Lee Sun-kyun).

Suddenly, Ki-woo has behind him folding pizza boxes for peanuts. Instead, he spends time with his lovable student and his naïve and pretty-pretty mother, Yeon-kyo (Cho Yo-Jeong), in the spacious room of the Parks designer. House. When it turns out that the little brother Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun), obsessed with Indians and hyperactive, needs a professor of art, Ki-woo discovers another opportunity and recommend to her sister, disguised as a college friend, "Jessica". And so a cuckoo more installs in this luxurious nest.

Although this is Bong's least zany title in a while – for example, there is no room for a broad and caricatured Tilda Swinton performance, for instance – the first act bounces off with a diabolical move while the scam develops, everything starts to look for the family and while they have been mischievous, no one has done anything so unforgivable yet. But even with unadorned debates, the sincere classical score of Jung Jae-il and the restraint of Hong Kyung-po's cinematography (which also turned latest "Burning", Korean masterpiece of the year, gives "Parasite" a burst of seriousness in brushed steel.

This is Bong's most accomplished work: unlike Herky-Jerk's "The Host", the story is so harmoniously intertwined that the joints are almost impossible to find, like those of the poured concrete walls of the modernist dream house of the parks. The design of Lee Ha-jun's production designers of the two contrasting residences, one a shabby underground tailor, the other a neat work of livable art on a closed suburban hill surrounded by a perfect intimacy with dense trees and shrubs, is a masterful example of class difference across space and light. These are products that apparently only the rich deserve.

It would have been easy for Bong and his co-author Han Jin-won to make the privileged parks openly hateful, but he has repeatedly said how nice they are. "If I was rich," Chung-Sook sighed, drunk, "I'd be fine too. The money is an iron; it eliminates all wrinkles. "Mr. and Ms. Park certainly live a largely untouched life, with the exception of the slightest crease of the nose when an unpleasant smell – perhaps the secret of poverty – assails them. But for every moment of blith, enraged rage on their part, there is a case of egotism equally gruesome or rancor on the part of their less affluent counterparts: one needs the skill of "one" or another. a watchmaker to maintain the pendulum of our sympathies in both directions. the despair of the poor and the idle hatred of the rich.

Tiny details, such as the mention of a Taiwanese pastry shop or the flickering of a dining room lamp, are paying off in this very complicated film from Bong's films, resulting in a devastating and satisfying conclusion as an increase in a thousand of these little films. moments. So, while the plans are going badly, there are almost gothic revelations and things are getting more complicated, we have been so pleased by Bong's intelligently concealed sympathy that we could shock ourselves by feeling a sense of cathartic justice at one time of violence clearly misplaced.

Catharsis does not last long, though. As fierce as this brilliant and caustic film is, with its flawless craftsmanship and humor – so dark, it's like that, it was raised in a basement and never saw the sun – he also constantly scolds with a dark roar how weak all this is. A high-level drama can in fact always have an importance, impression reinforced by the impartial, almost sardonic camera of Hong. Even this great royal battle between the haves and the have-nots will never be anything but a quarrel at the feet of an indifferent god, or worse, a distraction meant to distract his participants from the real enemy, system that creates and nurtures such divisions in the first place. This is the sad little truth evoked in the last moments of the film: eat the rich, do not bother, fill your belly, but you will soon be hungry and you will always be poor.

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