Parasite (Gisaengchung)

Director Bong Joon-ho

Bong Joon-ho at Cannes winning the Palme d'Or prize

PARASITE (Gisaengchung)              B+                  

South Korea  (132 mi)  2019  ‘Scope  d: Bong Joon-ho

Following last year’s festival circuit success of Hirokazu Koreeda’s heavily acclaimed Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku) (2018) and Lee Chang-dong’s underrated 2018 Top Ten List #8 Burning (Beoning), they apparently paved the way for Bong Joon-ho’s new film receiving plenty of accolades after winning the prestigious Palme d’Or prize at Cannes (by unanimous decision), the first South Korean film to earn that distinction, earning a whopping $70 million dollars in South Korea before its American release, devising a satiric black comedy that reveals a devastating chasm between rich and poor.  What starts out as a cleverly ingenious scam from an impoverished family to fake their way, one by one, into working for a filthy rich family without them ever realizing they are related, eventually goes awry, veering into unconventional Hollywood horror, becoming so over the top that the film deflects from the exquisitely dramatic build-up of character development to superbly constructed scenes of mayhem, becoming a perversely well-made free-for-all of wretched malaise, given a kind of apocalyptic thriller twist where the world is turned on its end, creating boldly audacious mood shifts not seen since Marin Ade’s 2017 Top Ten List #2 Toni Erdmann, allowing all the pulp fiction tension to dissipate, leaving audiences quietly dazed afterwards.  This is a more playful version of Jean Genet’s One Act play The Maids, loosely based upon the infamous Papin sisters, expanded into a sharply written comic satire on class divisions and the principles of social order in Claude Chabrol’s La Cérémonie (1995), a domestic thriller standing somewhere between comedy and horror.  While Chabrol offers a more classically eloquent portrait of scathing bourgeois satire, like Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, where the lower class servants sarcastically make fun of the idyll rich, Bong’s film has a few more rough edges, where the troublesome family at the root of an otherwise loving family drama overindulges their reach, biting off more than they can chew, leading to unexpected circumstances beyond their control, becoming a morality play, an exasperated comedy gone awry, leading to tragic results.  The Kim family in question is headed by the father, Song Kang-ho as Kim Ki-taek, an unemployed chauffeur.  Song is a recognizable, high-profile South Korean actor who has worked previously with Bong as the bungling detective in Memories of Murder (Salinui chueok) (2003) and the slow-witted father in THE HOST (2006), but also Lee Chang-dong as the quirky mechanic in Secret Sunshine (2007) and Park Chan-wook in various films, while getting his start with Hong Sang-soo.   His no-nonsense wife, a former hammer-throw champion from the medal on the wall, is Jang Hye-jin as Chung-sook, while Choi Woo-shik is the older brother Ki-woo, and Park So-dam is the younger sister Ki-jung, both failing their college entrance exams.  The Kim family lives in a cramped basement folding pizza boxes to earn a living, where we get an idea what they’re about when we discover they’re stealing the upstair neighbor’s Wi-Fi connection, initially befuddled when the neighbor changes their password, finding an active signal in an elevated section of the far corner of the room. 

This family is not afraid to use crude language to comic effect, while they’re most proud of Ki-jung’s unique gift of forgery where she’s able to produce professional looking documents, giving them fake credentials they’ve never actually achieved.  This comes in handy when a friend who’s leaving to study in America recommends Ki-woo for a job teaching English as a personal tutor for a teenage daughter of a wealthy Park family.  Realizing they have an artistically inclined young son that could use some art therapy, he recommends a noted specialist that just happens to be his sister.  Weaseling their way into the Park family was easy, but their working techniques are masterful, playing on the elitist ambitions of the rich, becoming sympathetic figures while literally hoodwinking this family for needed cash.  What’s amazing about the wealthy family is the grandiosity of their home, a sleek and modern look designed by an architect, given the appearance of a Glass House with floor to ceiling windows looking out onto the luscious greenery of their back lawn, literally an oasis, or an idyllic paradise on earth.  The all-knowing housekeeper, Lee Jung-eun as Gook Moon-gwang, is a holdover from when the original architect lived there, knowing every crack and crevice in the home.  The family’s isolation and quirky behavior, however, may remind viewers of Yorgos Lanthimos, a filmmaker whose characters defy comprehension, inventing surrealist imagery to accompany their outrageous behavior.  While the boring Park parents are incredibly gullible, so easy to manipulate, they generate little sympathy, as they have it all, apparently, but don’t seem to deserve it, as they simply don’t have the capacity to empathize.  Resorting to deviously underhanded methods, the Kim family entraps both the family driver and the housekeeper, causing both to be fired, their jobs filled by casual acquaintances, recommended professionals they just happen to know, bringing in expert driver Kim as the chauffeur and their suddenly transformed mother with her newly coiffed hair as the housekeeper, so everyone has a foot in the door carrying out their mission with military precision.  While they gush over their apparent success, the kid figures them out (though no one believes him), as each hired employee brings with them a peculiar smell that is not particularly agreeable, something akin to a poor man’s smell that’s more evocative of their own filthy subterranean quarters that can never be scrubbed clean, sending them scampering to use different deodorants and shampoos in an attempt to mask the odor.  But it’s a prevailing theme that exists throughout the film, a sharp critique of capitalism, with the rich and poor deviously dependent on the other, where humiliation is a bought and sold commodity that comes at a price, slowly taking its toll over time, with the camera cleverly moving back and forth between the two homes that couldn’t be more strikingly different, as if from two separate and starkly unequal worlds, a return to Kurosawa’s HIGH AND LOW (1963) disparity, becoming a mind-bending yet playful journey through various genre films, with the director in full display of his myriad of talents.    

 

The turning point occurs when the Park family decides to take their son camping, allowing the Kim’s to bask in the glory of this immaculate estate, raiding the icebox and liquor cabinet, picnicking on the lawn as we watch Chung-sook do a spectacular hammer throw before having a gloried Buñuelian feast mimicking the infamous “Last Supper” sequence in VIRIDIANA (1961) on the premises, imagining themselves as the permanent occupants, growing deliriously drunk and deluded as their accumulated trash and dirty dishes start piling up, leaving a mess everywhere you look while they’re entranced by watching the passing storm out the window, hypnotically mesmerized until the doorbell rings, immediately sending them into panic mode.  It turns out to be Moon-gwang, the dispelled housekeeper pleading in a raging downpour that she left something behind in the basement, asking to come inside.  While the rest of the family hides, Moon-gwang disappears into the blackness of the basement, which turns out to be a secret bunker, like an air-raid shelter, built in the event of an attack from North Korea with its own living quarters inside, which is where her husband, Park Myung-hoon as Geun-sae, has been hiding for years to evade ravenous loan sharks.  In one of the more deranged moments, he does an outrageously demented impersonation of his wife as a North Korean news announcer.  Incredulous at the discovery, the rest of the family awkwardly falls down the stairs in utter astonishment, with Moon-gwang cleverly capturing their appearance on her phone, threatening to expose the entire family, turning the tables, gaining the upper hand, basically ordering them to do whatever she pleases, suggesting even amongst the poor there’s always a power dynamic, a Darwinian survival of the fittest, all of which quickly changes when the Park family calls to announce their arrival in 8-minutes, driven away from their campsite by the storm.  Pandemonium sets in, where hilarity quickly turns to tragedy, including an all-out assault for control of their phone, playing nasty, as unexpected consequences ensue while they’re racing against time to clean up their mess.  The fear of being exposed drives them into temporary insanity, completely altering the look of the film, as the frenzied battle sets the stage for new territory, where the hyper-exaggerated delirium recalls Kim Ki-Young’s iconic Korean B-movie masterpiece THE HOUSEMAID (1960), where a supposedly stable household is upended by twisted transgressions that for the most part remain under the surface, carefully balancing tension and claustrophobia until all hell breaks loose, again coinciding with a mammoth storm of epic POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) proportions, literally flooding the lower depths of the Kim neighborhood, drowning out any safe space.  Mixing the absurdity of surrealism with graphic South Korean horror, Bong stages an infamous birthday party sequence for the young Park child that quickly goes wildly off the rails in a circus-like spectacle gone terribly wrong, creating an utterly devastating catastrophe of legendary status.  While the finale meanders a bit before finally coming to a quietly somber closing, it never achieves the moral complexity of serious contemplation, but it does provide the razzle dazzle of provocation, becoming a socially conscious parable for our times.  

Greta

Director Neil Jordan

Actress Chloë Grace Moretz at an event for Greta

Actress Isabelle Huppert doing her thing

GRETA                       D                    

Ireland  USA  (98 mi)  2019 ‘Scope  d:  Neil Jordan             Official Site

This is not Isabelle Huppert as the gregariously sunny and overly friendly tourist in Hang Sang-soo’s delightfully funny Claire's Camera (La caméra de Claire) (2017), but something more along the lines of Paul Verhoeven’s twistedly demented, over-the-top Elle (2016), where Huppert steals the show as a rape victim gone psycho in retaliation, a howling audience pleaser that likely sent Huppert more scripts along similar lines, with this film exploring similar territory.  Here, in an English-speaking role, she’s a wildly exaggerated, wacko stalker character, amusingly borrowing an Olivier Assayas technique utilized in Personal Shopper (2017), where a cellphone becomes an instrument of horror, sending shockwaves of anxiety through the audience in what seems an outrageous sequential sequence of editing, each emailed photo showing a glimpse of someone being followed, literally tracking her by the second, yet there is no one that can be seen, creating a creepy feeling of ghostly invisibility.  Huppert inhabits that unfilled space where you don’t want to go, feeling quite comfortable in the role, perhaps relishing the opportunity, as after each shot is finished shooting, the subsequent relief afterwards is probably a cascade of laughs, as this was probably much more fun to make than to sit in a theater to witness, where it’s all about psychological gamesmanship, offering a few clues along the way, but nothing that would suggest where this one is going.  Neil Jordan hasn’t made a film in 6-years, so something about this intrigued him.  Working with Huppert, who has over 120 film credits to her name, appearing in 20 films premiering in competition at Cannes, also more than 25 stage and nearly 20 television movie appearances, may have been the attraction, as who wouldn’t want to work with her?  She’s a French legend and icon, among the greatest to ever do it, still a force to be reckoned with.  That said, this is not among her better films, but is among her more trashy roles, as she is slumming in B-movie schlock film territory, brazenly going where few artists of her stature ever venture, as it’s considerably beneath her elevated rare air, as she won’t be nominated for any awards with this one, yet it’s to her credit that she’s willing to take on “any” role. 

Never one to shy away from horror films, this is a throwback to the era of films like THE SHINING (1980), DRESSED TO KILL (1980), FATAL ATTRACTION (1987), CAPE FEAR (1991) or BASIC INSTINCT (1992), where seemingly normal characters went off the rails in a ridiculously big way, becoming psychopathic avengers or killers, with overly familiar movie stars having naughty fun scaring the living bejeezus out of audiences.  While there tended to be Hitchcockian sexual undertones, that doesn’t exist here, instead relying upon an unknown factor, namely the death of a parent, which creates a certain amount of sympathy, making it that much easier to exploit the underlying vulnerabilities of the character.  Enter Frances McCullen (Chloë Grace Moretz), a Smith college graduate working as a waitress while living in a stunning Tribeca loft apartment gifted by the wealthy father of her best friend Erica, Maika Monroe from Robert David Mitchell’s urban zombie epic It Follows (2014), who feels like a Valley girl transplant from Southern California, speaking a girl lingo that seemingly only exists in the movies.  Surprisingly short on character development, we never learn much about anyone in this film, no back story, no other friendships to speak of, no social life to draw upon, basically a blank canvas that is sprinkled with various clues throughout, but everything is set in motion from a single seemingly innocuous event, the discovery of a handbag on the subway, with Frances intent on returning it to its rightful owner.  While Erica is all about stealing the cash and tossing the bag, Frances retorts, “That’s just not the way we do things where I’m from.”  Riding her bike across the bridge to Brooklyn (then leaving it unlocked), Frances discovers Greta (Huppert), a middle-aged widow who seems to get by offering piano instruction, playing Liszt as a past time, seemingly leading a lonely life, reaching out to Frances like a long-lost daughter, as her own is too busy living her life in Paris.  Suggesting she might get a pet dog for companionship, Frances agrees to help her pick one out, with Greta choosing the mopiest dog in the kennel, the most disinterested and least desirable, exuding no signs of friendliness, just one day away from being put to sleep.    

  

While these women are bonding, Frances freaks out Erica a bit by avoiding an invitation to a party, instead spending time with Greta, who Erica calls an “old lady,” which seems like misplaced priorities, with Erica berating her “She’s not your mother,” but Frances is actually calling her a friend.  That is, until she discovers Greta has a storage space filled with the exact same handbag, each one with a different girl’s name and phone number attached, signs of a deceitful plot with ominous implications, ignoring her altogether afterwards.  Greta ups the ante, flooding her cellphone with unanswered calls, showing up at work unexpectedly, growing desperate in her absence, showing signs of deteriorating mental instability.  Ignoring her altogether, Greta stands across the street from the restaurant where she works, remaining in that fixed position all day, then suddenly appears outside her apartment.  Calls to the police get her nowhere, as no one’s been threatened, where the police suggest that she simply ignore her.  Yet when she shows up with a restaurant reservation, she throws one hell of a hissy fit, played without an ounce of subtlety, turning demonstrably violent, where she has to be physically removed from the premises, hauled away in a paddy van, with Frances asking the police if she should still just ignore her?  She immediately files for a restraining order, but it takes months to obtain a court hearing, leaving her in a state of limbo.  Of course, things only escalate from there, as Greta turns up unexpectedly just about anywhere, where one of the best scenes in the entire film turns out to be a jolting shock of extreme fear that ends up a dream sequence, yet it magnifies the hold this woman has over Frances’ life.  Before long that hysterical fear becomes her reality, as Greta turns into a hidden monster with the most ridiculously vile motives, turning uglier by the minute, becoming a Gothic horror thriller so over-the-top that its shameless ambition seems designed to creep people out, yet Huppert, a true mastermind of lunacy, sunnily goes about her business, even dancing from the sheer joy of the evil she inflicts, as she’s a woman on a mission, undeterred by any and all obstacles, which she views as mere child’s play after a while, so easily manipulating others seemingly without effort.  Even Jordan regular Stephen Rea makes a brief appearance, but once the storyline takes on the psychotic deliriums of Greta’s deranged state of mind, the film becomes nauseatingly disturbing, too depressing to fall into the camp category, perhaps lacking the lesbian context it needs, especially since she plays the all too recognizable Liebestraum (Dream of Love) on the piano, Liberace Liebestraum.wmv - YouTube (4:34), the kind of lush melody featured in 30’s and 40’s heavily romanticized black and white love stories, instead regressing into the grotesque pleasures of torture porn, becoming little more than a crudely sadistic infantile fantasy.