On May 21, the Official Competition featured Parasite by Bong Joon Ho (South Korea) and the Festival created the event with Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood with, gathered for the first time on the big screen, Brad Pitt and Leonardo Di Caprio.
In his 9th film, Quentin Tarantino (Palme d’Or in 1994 with Pulp Fiction) is staging Rick Dalton (Leonardo Di Caprio), a television star whose career is declining, and the stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), his long-time liner, his stuntman and handyman. In Los Angeles in the late 1960s, the two men continue their careers alongside Sharon Tate, Steve McQueen or Bruce Lee. In the film, we meet the guru Charles Manson who, with his sect, brutally murdered Sharon Tate.
Parasite, an uncontrollable process
After working on high-budget films like Okja, a fantasy adventure film screened at Cannes in 2017 before being broadcast on Netflix, filmmaker Bong Joon Ho begins a new stage in his career with Parasite. His seventh film is a more intimate work where black humor and social satire blend into a beautifully constructed suspense. Parasite plunges two families of two opposite social classes into an inextricable situation where ordinary people are led by an uncontrollable process in a cruel tragicomedy.
Difficulty to fit into society
The four members of Ki-taek’s family are unemployed while the wealthy Park family lives in luxury. The Park are living in a splendid house with governess and driver. Ki-taek’s family live in a dilapidated basement and hack the neighbors’ wifi. The modest family would like to fit into society but after commercial failures, only small jobs help to survive. Ki-taek’s children can not afford to study at the faculty while Park’s children have private teachers at home. One day, Ki-taek’s son Ki-woo managed to be recommended for private English lessons at the Park’s. Thus begins the slippery slope.
An increasingly polarized society
In a committed and caustic approach, Bong Joon Ho shows the insurmountable boundaries between social circles, between the powerful and the poor in the prevailing ultra-liberalism and the ravages it causes everywhere. Who are the parasites? The society’s forgotten who manipulate a rich family for a salary or the ultra-rich who call the governess in the middle of the night to prepare a favorite dish in 8 minutes?
The luxurious Park House plays an important role in Parasite: built and inhabited by a famous architect, it houses the twists and turns of history. But it also conceals a well-hidden secret that will rush the two families into chaos.
The Festival is on YesICannes.com: yesicannes.com/category/festival-de-cannes
The Red Carpet of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood in pictures
Click on pictures to enlarge – ©YesICannes.com – All rights reserved
Recent Comments