Gautam Anand
Bong Joon-ho’s latest offering, ‘Parasite’, has just released its first trailer. The movie was a sensation at the Cannes film festival, winning the Palme d’Or, beating out the likes of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood‘. ‘Parasite’ is a South Korean (the first Korean movie to win a Palme d’Or) black comedy film which is being distributed by Neon, who have the North American rights to the movie.
The story of the film follows Kim Ki-taek, an unemployed truck driver who lives with his wife, Choong Sook, and their two children who are old enough to go to college. However, the family struggles with finances. The members try the best to lead a better, richer lifestyle. Things begin to look up for the family as the son is hired as an English tutor, and the daughter is employed as an art therapist by the same rich family. Soon enough, a symbiotic relationship begins to form between this affluent family and Kim’s. The latter provides indispensable luxury services to the family that is well off. In return, they are alleviated from their conditions of poverty. However, Bong Joon-ho soon turns the story around on its head as greed and class prejudice turns the relationship toxic, while the entire situation becomes somewhat sinister.
When the trailer starts, we are introduced to the Kim family in their cluttered home as a bug is flicked away. Soon the father suggests that the windows be kept open in their basement apartment when the fumigator arrives, so they can get ‘free extermination’. The fumes roll in like fog and the family is enveloped. Amidst this sensation of being choked by their conditions, a ray of light shines on the Kim family when the son gets offered a job to be an English tutor to an affluent family. The friend who helps out knows he does not have a degree as the boy has to take help from his sister to get a fake degree made. Once he is at the household, he recommends his sister to the family as an art therapist. However, in order not to arouse suspicion, he pretends his sister is an art student at Chicago who is unrelated to him. Kim says that rich people are gullible and we get a sense that the Kim family is trying to take them for a ride. All the family members infiltrate the affluent household, performing various tasks. While the rich family and Kim’s family grow increasingly closer, the trailer shows a montage of shots which indicate that events are about to take a more sinister turn. It teases the imagery of blood for a while before blood actually splatters on slices of white bread which are kept on a sunny outdoor table.
The trailer does not shy away from advertising the acclaim that the movie has gathered from various critics. ‘Parasite’ arrives in theaters on October 11, 2019.
