Parasite lost or parasite found?

Film review: Parasite In Love

MANILA, Philippines — Is love in the mind or in the heart? This is the question that the movie Parasite In Love tries to answer, but in a roundabout way that touches on medical science, psychology and, along the trip, makes pointed commentaries on modern society and interpersonal relationships.

Although imbued with wonderful Japanese scenery and glossy camera work, I must warn you that this is not your typical wine-and-roses romantic comedy. The leads are as atypical as they come: Male protagonist Kengo is a brilliant computer programmer but suffers from mysophobia (an extreme fear of dirt). He cannot touch anything or anyone without seeing in his mind germs colonizing his hands, and thus has to spray lavish amounts of disinfectant on everything. He thus leads the life of a virtual hermit. Bitter and envious of other people with normal relationships, he programs a virus that will shut down all forms of communications in Japan so that couples will not be able to plan their dates.

Female lead Hijiri, on the other hand, is a scopophobe; she has a morbid fear of being stared at by people. This makes her lead a lonely life as she isolates herself by constantly playing music through a huge pair of Bluetooth headphones. She is in high school but refuses to attend her classes because of her disorder.

The two are brought together — not by fate, as you might guess — but by a mysterious person named Izumi. Having surveilled Kengo for sometime, he suddenly shows up in Kengo’s clinically-clean pad and offers him a deal: “Babysit” Hijiri for two months for a pay of half a million yen, or be turned in to the police for developing his virus. It was more of blackmail, really, hence an offer Kengo could not refuse.

It is within this cinematic milieu that the two protagonists come together, torturously at first (as their respective psychoses get in the way of any relationship at all), but then they begin to see that – aside from their disorders – they have many things in common: Their loneliness, feelings of not fitting in, and suicides in their families. Slowly, imperceptibly, they begin to fall for each other — both for the first time — with everything that is picturesque about Japan as their backdrop.

A twist (one of many in the film) is revealed in the second act. Hijiri’s father is a very wealthy Japanese public official seeking a cure for Hijiri’s problem: There is a parasite in her brain that controls her emotions, causing her phobia. This worm has also reached the point where it must reproduce, and must find someone with the same parasite in another person’s brain, manipulate its host to fall in love with that person and, during intimacy, mate and lay eggs. But this is also the time that the worms become big enough for them to be surgically removed. Her dad must thus find someone with the same parasite for Hijiri, and that man is Kengo. As an aside, yes, such a worm actually exists.

And so, the conflict to be resolved is, do they have the worms making them fall in love with each other removed and run the risk of falling out of love, or do they keep the worms inside their heads and stay in love, but which will eventually kill them?

Nana Komatsu (whose movie The Last 10 Years I reviewed for this paper last Aug. 22, 2022) turns in another bravura performance as half of the misanthropic lead characters, masterfully under-acting a role that easily lends itself to histrionics. Playing deftly off her is Kento Hayashi, giving his character a more impactful tone as a frustrated young man unable to lead a normal life. Director Kakimoto Kosaku must be credited with keeping the story more visual yet maintaining the interest of the audience, when a lesser director would have succumbed to a wordier style.

Verily, he is a filmmaker who follows the movie maxim “show, don’t tell” to the letter. The symbolism of the two lovers needing each other to live and the worms being diplozoids is a stroke of cinematic genius and is not to be missed as it relates to the story.

In all, the movie is a showcase of film language that skillfully melds visual grammar, subtle symbolisms, movie metaphor and even computer-generated graphics into a coherent whole that successfully conveys its main dichotomy: Is falling in love a result of true human feelings, or is it just the survival instincts of a pair of worms? At the same time, it presents an age-old dilemma: Would you rather stay in love and die, or lose the feelings of being in love and stay alive? To use a (bad) pun, will it be Parasite Lost or Parasite Found?