translated from Spanish: Standing applause ? THE DEBATE

It should come as no surprise that filmmaker Bong Joon-ho (1969, Daegu) hands us one of the best films of 2019 with Parasites (2019, South Korea), which he directs and co-writes with Jin Won Han. Winner, as we know, of the Palme d’Or at the last Cannes festival and safe bet to take the foreign language film awards next year; Bong Joon-ho has pushed to the limit one of the recurring themes in his filmography: conflicts between members of different social classes. That’s the engine behind the remarkable The Express of Fear, and is present in both The Guest, Okja and Memoirs of a Murderer. But will Parasis be his riskiest and less allegorical proposition on how social differences are with which we end up defining what we call the “modern world”? In Parasites we know Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik). He works, along with his family, folding cartons that will turn into pizza boxes. That gives them the little money they use to keep going, because none of them have jobs and apparently none of them are looking for it hard. Their condition is so precarious that, to deal with their domestic bug problems, the family opens the window when their neighbor gets fumiated hoping that it’s enough to solve some of their many problems. So, a friend who’s about to leave the country offers Kim Ki-woo to replace him by teaching English to a wealthy family girl. That friend is in love with the girl and therefore doesn’t want anyone who isn’t trusted to come near her. This is how Kim Ki-woo decides to perform as Kevin, and begins teaching English to Park Da-hye (Jung Ziso). The thing is, it’s immediately clear to us that the friend definitely didn’t know Kim Ki-woo: since his arrival he behaves like a romantic who loves both the girl and her family. You might think that his intentions are to snatch his absent friend’s work, make him pay for that trust he placed in him; but, gee, let’s remember we’re in a Bong Joon-ho movie. So things are neither as simple nor so “obvious.” Because Parasites is one of those sadistic movies that you like to play with your viewers. The plot twists are the order of the day, and although some look to be coming, I assure you that none could be considered “logical”. In any case, the plot is gripping defeats in which it forces us to think. Will they really dare to go down that road? And even that question couldn’t be answered with a simple “yes.” Parasites is also a visual feast. Kyung-pyo Hong’s camera gives a chair about what it means to use framing as a narrative tool: from somewhat obvious symbolic manifestations to splendid camera movements. Each moment he places a brick on another, until he ends up forming a solid wall in which someone else, surely a spectator, will end up feeling the need to make a graffiti in which will surely read: “chaos reigns” or “equality?, really?” This, ladies and gentlemen, boys, girls, young people: this is cinema. And from here, a round of applause.



Original source in Spanish