“Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film”. That’s Werner Herzog on Jean-Luc Godard and while I may not agree with him about Godard, I think his statement suits this film. Director Nadav Lapid wants to highlight the loneliness and befuddlement of the protagonist but the approach he takes smacks of a director imitating the French movies he wished to have made.
Yoav (Tom Mercier) is an ex-army man from Israel looking to leave his life there behind and start a new existence in France. He is so determined in this that he even refuses to speak Hebrew and doesn’t want to see his own father. He is rescued by a young couple (Quentin Dolmaire, Louise Chevillotte) from freezing in his apartment. This couple will become the only sort-of companions Yoav will have throughout the film. Mercier is quite good as the lost Yoav, in a performance where he has to use the whole of his body, Mercier doesn’t shy away. If only the film was up to the performance. Subtlety seems to be the name of the game, but Lapid also wants to force-feed you at certain junctions. What else to make of the scene with the gay pornographer and the rehearsal scene? Again circling back to the Herzog quote, it would be better if Lapid had just forgotten his cinematic history and just got on with the film he wanted to make.
In these times when people are rueing the decline of the mid-budget movie, Parasite serves as the perfect example of the type of ‘art meets popcorn’ type of film that used to line up theatres in yesteryears. The film has plenty of laughs, but it leaves you thinking days after the film is over.
The Kim family live in a semi-basement house. When the son of the family (Choi Woo-shik) gets a job at the the home of the wealthy Park family, he conspires to get his whole family employed in the same home. The Kim family tricks the husband and wife (Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong) using various innovative means and this is the funniest part of the film. They eventually become such integral parts of the household, the whole house is left to them one night. The son wonders, “What if we had a house such as this? ” His father (Song Kang-ho, deserving of all the accolades) answers, “What makes you think this isn’t our house?” It all goes downhill after that for the family, after their party at the house is spoiled by a former servant (Lee Jung-eun). This is where the film takes a dramatic turn but director Bong Joon-ho keeps a light-hand throughout.
I am not as in love with the film as some people maybe because I didn’t find it as revolutionary as some (the first film I saw at the festival, Virdiana also dealt with the same themes after all.) But this is must-see movie-making nonetheless.
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