“People who live in ceilings are the scum of society.”
At the risk of being evicted from his home, office clerk Shin-dong has no choice but to sign up for the mysterious “Wolwolse” program, which allows Seoul residents to rent out a room – just one – in their home to other occupants. Caught in the middle of an unprecedented housing crisis, the young man resolves to share his tiny space so as not to end up on the street.
Two disturbing individuals soon appear at his door: a passive-aggressive colossus in a grotesque outfit, and his Lilliputian wife who looks like a porcelain doll. It is with them that the protagonist will have to cohabit as best he can. Even more disturbing is the phenomenon of the “ceiling people”, those slightly mad citizens whom the government, for lack of space, chooses to house in the cramped rooms just below the roofs. Shin-dong realizes that he is now never alone…
In her second feature film, filmmaker Yoon Eun-kyoung presents a world as comical as it is sinister, with influences from Buñuel and Polanski. The Tenants, which had its North American premiere at Fantasia, is a biting critique of South Korean society and its capitalist excesses.
And while the movie takes place in a dystopian future, with governments not – yet – at the point of allowing rooms to be rented as housing, the director’s portrayal of life in the metropolis is quite realistic. Overpriced housing, air pollution, Kafkaesque public administrations, the omnipresence of technology… these elements seem less and less exaggerated.
A seventh art with a claim
In this respect, Yoon Eun-kyoung is part of a trend I believe to be present among young Korean filmmakers. While the leading lights of the new wave of the early 2000s (Park Chan-wook, Kim Jee-woon, Na Hong-jin) are more accustomed to dealing with classic gangster film themes (such as revenge, redemption or honor), emerging talents are taking a slightly different path.
Indeed, recent years have seen the emergence of a more social, more engaged Korean cinema, which often shows domestic life in Seoul as violently alienating. Ordinary places – offices, anonymous dwellings – are the most frightening, and routine becomes a vector of horror.
With his excellent Next Soohee (2022), July Jung represents this movement well, as does Jason Yu, Bong Joon-ho’s former assistant director, with Sleep (2023). Having made a habit of dealing with political issues in his films, Bong is perhaps a precursor of this new fashion, which also includes more discreet titles – caught at recent editions of Fantasia – such as Yoon-Seo Jin’s Chorokbam, Park Kang’s Seire and, thus, The Tenants.
Remarkable visual work
At first, the premise seems comical. The surrealism of the plot – reinforced by the magnificent black-and-white imagery that plunges the protagonists into a soft half-light – gives rise to laugh-out-loud exchanges, but quickly becomes disconcerting, as the protagonist suffers terrifying visions. Gaunt bodies climb on him while he sleeps, eyes appear on the ceiling, secret passages are revealed in the apartment… At times, it’s like seeing a new Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977).
Yoon Eun-kyoung demonstrates an impressive talent for directing. With the majority of sequences taking place in a three-and-a-half room, she manages to energize her a priori limited setting. The baroque composition, which makes frequent use of character reflections and dramatic lighting effects, helps the space breathe, while the montage of repetitive actions becomes hypnotic. All the performers, who rival each other in intensity, complete the charm of this daring project, which could have been an appalling platitude, but instead proves to be one of this year’s most ingenious productions.
My only criticism is that the ending is a little too messy and predictable. At the same time, it perhaps shows the disenchantment of youth in a country obsessed with work and riven by social inequality, which was governed by the far right from 2013 to 2017, and then from 2022 to the present day.
The Tenants was presented at the Fantasia Festival on August 4, 2024.
