Parasite, the latest feature from acclaimed South Korean director Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Okja), took home the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. Previous winners of the prestigious award include sex, lies, and videotape, Pulp Fiction, and one of last year’s finest films, Shoplifters. In other words, it’s a big deal; maybe even bigger than winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, if you consider Crash and Green Book that never won the Palme d’Or. And now you can see what all the hubbub — Parasite is batting a perfect 70 for 70 among critics on Rotten Tomatoes — is about in the darkly funny trailer above.
Bonghive, assemble. Here’s the official plot summary:
Meet the Park Family: the picture of aspirational wealth. And the Kim Family, rich in street smarts but not much else. Be it chance or fate, these two houses are brought together and the Kims sense a golden opportunity. Masterminded by college-aged Ki-woo, the Kim children expediently install themselves as tutor and art therapist, to the Parks. Soon, a symbiotic relationship forms between the two families. The Kims provide “indispensable” luxury services while the Parks obliviously bankroll their entire household. When a parasitic interloper threatens the Kims’ newfound comfort, a savage battle for dominance breaks out, threatening to destroy the fragile ecosystem between the Kims and the Parks.
Parasite, starring Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, and Park So-dam, opens on October 11.
