Story of two Korean families

Rating: 9/10 (3 February 2020)

This is the first time I can remember that a Korean-language film has been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, and it is also nominated for Academy Awards in the International Feature (former Foreign Language Film), Original Screenplay, Production Design, Editing, and Director (Bong Joon Ho) categories as well. It is already the first Korean film to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival. This movie was funnier than I was expecting. Set in Seoul, it shows a poor family, the Kims, ingratiating themselves with a rich one, the Parks. The members of the rich family are actually quite decent, although somewhat condescending and gullible, and the Kims are likable rogues. The Kims, consisting of a father, mother, son, and daughter, live in a semi-basement apartment that looks out on an alley where drunks urinate. The father and mother are unemployed, the son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) has failed the entrance exam for the South Korean university system, and the daughter Ki-jung (Park So-dan) has failed to get into an art school. They fold pizza boxes for cash. When a friend (Park Seo Joon) tells Ki-woo that the Park teenage daughter Da-hye (Jung Ji-so) needs a tutor, Ki-woo applies for and, with the help of documents forged by his sister, gets the job. Then when he learns that the Park toddler son needs an art therapist for a recent traumatic event, Ki-woo recommends his sister, without disclosing that that she is his sister. (The traumatic event that the boy suffered becomes important later.) With the help of Google, she bluffs her way into obtaining the position. Then Ki-jung figures out how to get the Park family chauffeur fired, and the Kim father Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) gets the job. Using the cook/housekeeper's (Lee Jung Eun) peach allergy, they manage to get her fired as well, and the Kim mother Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin) takes her place. By halfway through the film, the Parks are employing all four of the Kims without knowing that they are members of the same family. Complications ensue, of course, and there is a plot twist that I did not seek coming. As a social satire, this film is excellent, although the violent ending seemed incongruent with the rest of the film.