Four years ago, before Covid turned everything upside down, a new Asian masterpiece world premiered virtually unnoticed at the Toronto Film Festival. That film was “A Sun,” a multifaceted Taiwanese family saga from director Chung Mong-Hong that seemed to shift and evolve as it unfolded, challenging what audiences thought they knew about the characters. Tucked away in TIFF’s overcrowded (and under-promoted) Contemporary World Cinema section, the film easily slid under the radar.

Toronto programmers weren’t about to make the same mistake with “A Normal Family,” a film of similar force from South Korea, giving it a coveted Gala spot. Director Hur Jin-ho’s complex, complacency-shattering moral study boasts a heightened yet easily relatable premise, and strong potential to play well around the globe. Like “A Sun,” the movie comes roaring out of the gate with a shocker of an opening scene: An aggro jerk in a blood-red Maserati...