Parasite: A Family in a Half-Basement - Pon Joon-ho and Ryusuke Hamaguchi, directors of the same era who resonate in the language of cinema . | feature

Parasite: A Family in the Half-Land" Pon Joon-ho and Ryusuke Hamaguchi, directors of the same era who resonate with each other through the language of film.

For creators, there is no greater happiness than to be able to inspire each other contemporaneously through what they have created. The seemingly never-ending dialogue between Pon Joon-ho and Ryusuke Hamaguchi makes us realize this.
The Kim family lives in a half-underground house while all the members are unemployed, but when the eldest son enters the mansion of an IT company president and his family as a tutor, he becomes a "parasite. Parasite: A Family of Half-Breeds," the latest film by Pon Joon-ho, winner of the Palme d'Or at the 72nd Cannes International Film Festival, is about to be released nationwide in Japan. Director Hamaguchi has long been an admirer of Pon Joon-ho's films, while director Pon Joon-ho is a great admirer of "Sleeping and Waking". Their words and enthusiasm, which they discussed until the end of their first meeting, will push the reader's back beyond the movie screen.

Photo_Yosuke Torii

Text_Fumihisa Miyata

Edit_Shinri Kobayashi

~STORY~.
The Kim family is poor, and their daily bread is made by doing odd jobs at home. They are stuck in their "half-underground" house, where the ground is right in front of them when they open the windows, there is almost no sunlight, and the toilet sits at the highest point of the house due to low water pressure. How will this life change when they meet the wealthy Park family, who live in a luxurious mansion?

. in fact, I was a tutor in college too.

Hamaguchi:Are you tired from the promotion?

Pon:(Holds hand over mouth as if speaking privately) The schedule is tight, but ...... hahahahahaha!　I'm having a great time doing it. We've already talked too much about "Parasite" so far (laughs) , so let's talk about "Sleeping and Waking" (2018). I enjoyed it very much . It will be released in Korea in 2019 and in the top ten movies of the year in movie magazines I have always mentioned the name "Sleeping and Waking".

Hamaguchi:No, no, no, ...... I have listed "Parasite" in the "Cahiers du Cinema" magazine's top ten best films of the 2010s, and it's also the number one film of 2019. So, can I still tell you about "Parasite"?

Pon:Of course (laughs).

Director Pon Joon-ho (left) and Ryusuke Hamaguchi (right) meet for the first time.

Hamaguchi:I first saw it in Seoul at a screening with English subtitles and was moved to the point of shaking. I have seen it three times so far and have thought of many questions to ask it today, but I feel as if I cannot compete with any of them. First of all, what was the driving force that made you decide to make this film, and let me ask you about the core of your idea.

Pon:I did not start with the theme of "poor family/wealthy family" from the beginning, nor did I have a specific character in mind. . We started from a "situation" - a situation of infiltration, and the pleasure of infiltration.

. because, as a matter of fact, when I was in college, I also taught a middle school boy from a rich family as a tutor. At the time, my girlfriend was tutoring him in Japanese, and she introduced me to his house because he needed a math teacher. I was going to introduce my friends in the same department too - just like a chain of "parasites" - but I was fired after two months and never went beyond that (laughs). . Still, I had the strange feeling that I was entering the homes of very wealthy people, one by one, undercover. So you had the experience of peeping into other people's private lives. This junior high school student took me upstairs when my parents were not around and showed me the sauna, which was in the mid-1990s, and I remember being amazed that there was a sauna in the house.

This "situation" became the starting point for "Parasite". I thought how interesting it would be to have a tutor come into the house, a driver come into the house, and eventually the whole family come into the house.