Taglines: Misplaced familyhood.
The Kims – mother and father Chung-sook and Ki-taek, and their young adult offspring, son Ki-woo and daughter Ki-jung – are a poor family living in a shabby and cramped half basement apartment in a busy lower working class commercial district of Seoul. Without even knowing it, they, especially Mr. and Mrs. Kim, literally smell of poverty. Often as a collective, they perpetrate minor scams to get by, and even when they have jobs, they do the minimum work required.
Ki-woo is the one who has dreams of getting out of poverty by one day going to university. Despite not having that university education, Ki-woo is chosen by his university student friend Min, who is leaving to go to school, to take over his tutoring job to Park Da-hye, who Min plans to date once he returns to Seoul and she herself is in university.
The Parks are a wealthy family who for four years have lived in their modernistic house designed by and the former residence of famed architect Namgoong. While Mr. and Mrs. Park are all about status, Mrs. Park has a flighty, simpleminded mentality and temperament, which Min tells Ki-woo to feel comfortable in lying to her about his education to get the job. In getting the job, Ki-woo further learns that Mrs.
Park is looking for an art therapist for the Parks’ adolescent son, Da-song, Ki-woo quickly recommending his professional art therapist friend “Jessica”, really Ki-jung who he knows can pull off the scam in being the easiest liar of the four Kims. In Ki-woo also falling for Da-hye, he begins to envision himself in that house, and thus the Kims as a collective start a plan for all the Kims, like Ki-jung using assumed names, to replace existing servants in the Parks’ employ in orchestrating reasons for them to be fired.
The most difficult to get rid of may be Moon-gwang, the Parks’ housekeeper who literally came with the house – she Namgoong’s housekeeper when he lived there – and thus knows all the little nooks and crannies of it better than the Parks themselves. The question then becomes how far the Kims can take this scam in their quest to become their version of the Parks.
Parasite (Korean: 기생충) is a 2019 South Korean black comedy thriller film directed by Bong Joon-ho, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Han Jin-won. It stars Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Jang Hye-jin, and Lee Jung-eun and follows the members of a poor family who scheme to become employed by a wealthy family by infiltrating their household and posing as unrelated, highly qualified individuals.
Parasite premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival on 21 May 2019, where it became the first South Korean film to win the Palme d’Or. It was then released in South Korea by CJ Entertainment on May 30, 2019. The film received universal critical acclaim, with praise directed towards its screenplay, Bong’s direction, editing, production values, and the performances of the cast (particularly Song). It is considered one of the greatest films of the 2010s and one of the greatest films of all time. It grossed over $266 million worldwide on a production budget of about $11 million, becoming the highest-grossing South Korean film.
Among its numerous accolades, Parasite won a leading four awards at the 92nd Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film, becoming the first film not in English in history to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was also the first South Korean film to receive Academy Award recognition. It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language, and became the first film not in English to win the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
Parasite (2019)
Directed by: Bong Joon-ho
Starring: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Jeong-eun Lee, Hyun-jun Jung, Joo-hyung Lee
Screenplay by: Bong Joon-ho, Han Jin-won
Production Design by: Ha-jun Lee
Cinematography by: Kyung-pyo Hong
Film Editing by: Jinmo Yang
Costume Design by: Se-yeon Choi
Music by: Jaeil Jung
MPAA Rating: R for language, some violence and sexual content.
Distributed by: CJ Entertainment
Release Date: October 11, 2019
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