Lyon (AFP)

Palme d'Or in Cannes, his film "Parasite" is a triumph both critical and commercial around the world. But South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, guest of the Lumière Festival in Lyon, did not expect at all the success of this film "a little embarrassing, uncomfortable".

Sold on nearly 200 international markets, a record for a South Korean film, "Parasite" has already garnered over 90 million dollars in revenue worldwide. In France, it attracted more than 1.67 million spectators, becoming the Golden Palm most seen for fifteen years.

Family drama and thriller about social inequalities, mixed comedy, "Parasite" tells the story of a family of unemployed whose life will change the day the son becomes a teacher of English for a bourgeois family, marking the beginning of 'an uncontrollable gear.

"+ Parasite + speaks about poverty, smells, and the raw side in the film can be a little embarrassing for the audience," said Bong Joon-ho during an interview with AFP in Lyon on the occasion of the Festival Light - dedicated to classic films - of which he is one of the guests of honor.

"In my film, there is no solidarity between the poor either, on the contrary, the poor fight with each other," adds the director of "The Host" and "Snowpiercer, the Transperceneige".

"That's also why I thought the film would bother, because in general we see the wicked rich and the poor in solidarity and winning," the filmmaker analyzes, assuring that he was "very worried" about the film. welcome that would receive this feature for which he "just hoped to get into his expenses".

If he passes with "Parasite" - his seventh film - from one tone to another with great mastery, combining dark comedy and drama, the director of 50 years says he has however "never felt that he mixed genres, even while writing the screenplay or shooting. "

"I think I have different emotions in me," he says. "That's just what naturally comes out in my films."

- A next film in preparation -

Bong Joon-ho, whose first feature film "Barking Dog" was released in 2000, had a great success in 2003 with "Memories of Murder", taken from the actual story of a serial killer in the 1980s who raped and murdered several women.

The Korean police announced in September that they had identified a suspect in the case, a 56-year-old man jailed for raping and murdering his sister-in-law, who was confused by his DNA more than 30 years after the first murder.

"For years, I only thought about him, I wondered how I could meet him," says Bong Joon-ho. "I thought about him so much that I even dreamed at night," he adds. "I was getting completely crazy."

"Like today, we see this man in the newspapers, we see his picture, I have very mixed feelings, complex," he says.

After the success of "Parasite", Bong Joon-ho is already working on a forthcoming film, "a project he has had for 17 years in mind".

"It's a weird thing, a kind of horror movie or a thriller, it's happening in Seoul, we'll see the Korean landscape, but I want to dissect," he says.

"And then there's another film, a project in English, it's a drama that," he adds.

Would he be ready to rework with Netflix, after "Okja", his previous feature whose selection in Cannes in 2017 had sparked a heated controversy, leading the festival to oblige a theatrical release for films in competition?

"Now, before it's streaming, there are sometimes previews of Netflix movies in theaters, so I think they too are starting to get a little bit more flexible, showing movies in the cinema," says the filmmaker. with black hair provided.

"If it continues in this direction, I would like to work with them again," he adds.

© 2019 AFP