“Bleak but witty, The Tenants is a well-crafted Kafkaesque nightmare that is at once an anxiety inducing and a satisfying morality tale.”
Visitors to the city of Seoul tend to marvel at its futuristic appearance with modernist buildings and architecturally pleasing structured layout. It is therefore an ideal location as a central character in the black-and-white dystopian thriller The Tenants, which featured in the 28th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival. The film incisively presents an uncomfortable reality as it lays bare the housing crisis and environmental issues of an overcrowded Seoul in the near future, where phone calls are done through holograms and automated digital assistants.
Shin-dong, played by Kim Dae-geon, is the idealistic protagonist facing eviction from his pre-pubescent landlord, who decides to take matters into his own hands by entering into a complicated sub-letting arrangement with new tenants renting his bathroom to afford him more tenants’ rights. This temporary reprieve provides a compelling outlook as well as a character study examining the manner in which such a convenience becomes Shin-dong’s liability. Initially, Shin-dong unwittingly feels compelled to adapt his lifestyle to accommodate the new tenants’ eccentricities – can you imagine the prospect of being unable to use your bathroom urgently in the middle of the night? The additional challenge is that Shin-dong is aiming for a promotion at work and faces the pressure to present himself as the model employee, which his arrangement threatens to impact. Bleak but witty, The Tenants is a well-crafted Kafkaesque nightmare that is at once an anxiety inducing and a satisfying morality tale.
The Tenants’ black-and-white visuals, as well as its decision to focus on the pristine interior of the apartment as a sought-after commodity for many Seoul residents, highlight the shiny veneer and serve to illustrate the predicament. The apartment’s design reflects the brutalist architectural style – a worthy sight in itself. Yet, such apartments may also be considered a sanctuary from the city’s pollution and the economic stranglehold placed upon citizens like Shin-dong. The Tenants exposes a vicious cycle as its citizens feel reluctant to leave the city for fear of being unable to return. Therefore they are trapped within the unending corporate life cycle of selling their souls for a pay cheque, a depressing prospect.
Indeed, Shin-dong subscribes to this daily working grind and returns to his apartment at night solely to sleep. He perpetuates the corporate dream sold to many – he works for the Happy Meat company and is competitive. Kim Dae-geon’s performance is impressive in conveying a worker who is both complicit within the system and equally seeking to combat the status quo. We are invited to question these practices and whether they are ideal for our overall wellbeing as Shin-dong strives to be recognized as the best worker but effectively has no life. As seen in many workplaces, Shin-dong’s managers dangle the proverbial carrot in front of him as he dares to dream of working within the hallowed Sphere 2, with its benefits of clean air and better living conditions.
The Tenants is a bold critique of corporate practices, combined with housing issues, and incorporates many life philosophies in this respect. Shin-dong’s colleagues even post a note on the bathroom door stating that an overworked employee is a burden to all. This may be a heavy-handed approach to convey the message but it is effective. The statement implies that collaboration within a team may be preferable to individualism as a contrast to Happy Meat’s adoption of the toxic working practices of effectively working ‘till you drop.
There will be the inevitable lifeless comparisons to Parasite, but The Tenants distinguishes itself by evoking other themes in addition to the political ‘eat the rich’ message. Furthermore, the film differs from stereotypical notions of K-cinema as there are no scenes of large groups drinking copious amounts of soju! However, The Tenants also intrigues by reveling in its strangeness à la The Twilight Zone, with Shin-dong’s male tenant wearing a peculiar hat with a bird’s feather and his younger wife bearing a creepy, sardonic grin. Above all, they opted to live in a bathroom voluntarily which further cements their oddity.
Director Yoon Eun-Kyung was inspired by a book containing the premise of tenants living in different layers within an apartment reflecting society’s social strata. Therefore, she permits The Tenants to operate on this multi-genre sphere alongside fully embracing the horror tropes to stay one step ahead of the audience. As such, there are many twists and turns in place for Shin-dong to navigate and the audience can resonate when there are obstacles outside of his control.
Yoon has created a chilling but thought-provoking version of the tale that captures the essence of an employee trapped within strange circumstances. The Tenants becomes one of those films that presents a reality that seems too cruel to be true but also provides scope for an analysis of the power of our mental health and our interaction with the absurd. Despite being let down later by an uneven tonal shift in a bid to tie up all of its concepts neatly, The Tenants is a rich, well-made, multi-faceted and psychologically terse film which will hopefully find its audience, as it deserves to be seen by many.