Shoplifters review: Writer/director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Palme D’or winner slips quietly into selected cinemas this week, a low key arrival for such a prestigious title but one that that’s remarkably in tune with the film’s tone. It’s only when you examine your feelings after its final, devastating shot that you realise you’ve been taken in and you’re consumed by the anger and hurt that simmers beneath its apparently benign surface.
Image credit: Courtesy of TIFF
Kore-eda has created a film full of interconnecting strands, all of which mesh together brilliantly. Family is at its core. What makes one? In the deepest sense of the word, that is, so it doesn’t necessarily mean related by blood. After all, you can’t choose your family, nor they you. Or can you? On his way back from the store, Osamu (Lily Franky) and Shota (Jyo Kairi) come across a little girl in the freezing cold and invite her home with them. After they and the family learn something of the hardships she’s faced, they decide to shelter her. Osamu’s family live on the edge of society, supplementing low income jobs with shoplifting and scams, but are happy together – until an incident upsets the balance they’ve created and everything starts to fall apart.
Yuri (Miyu Sasaki), as the family call her, has had a rough time at the hands of her parents, who constantly argue. She bears the physical scars, including burn marks. So where should she be? With her true mother and father, who are incapable of looking after her properly and treat her badly, or a group of people who give her the love and caring she needs, despite earning their money in a precarious and illegal way? The question doesn’t apply just to her. As the film unfurls in its delicate way, it becomes clear that teenager Shota faces a similar dilemma – hence his reluctance to call Osamu “Father” – and that teenage girl Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) is there under false pretences. Their lives with their apparent parents have been happy, but they’re based on a lie.
The director doesn’t offer an answer to the fundamental family question. Maybe there isn’t one or, if there is, it comes in shades of grey. But there’s more under his gaze here that what, on the surface, can sound like an updated Japanese version of Oliver Twist. It’s a portrait of life on the margins in what the Western world regards as an affluent country. It is but, like any other, it has its poor and for this particular family it’s a constant struggle to make ends meet, so that shoplifting is a way of life and something that the children learn as part and parcel of growing up. And the local shopkeepers know and, to a certain extent, tolerate it out of sympathy. A work injury means there’s even less money coming in, so that when celebratory fireworks are let off nearby, the closest the family can get to being involved is to listen to them from the balcony of their crowded, ramshackle home.
Kore-eda has opted for the minimum of soundtrack on the film – a smattering at the start and the end, but little else – so that the overall semi-documentary impression isn’t shattered. And it allows us to concentrate even more on the relationships between the members of the family, with the mother figure, Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) and the grandmother (Kilin Kiki) providing something close to a Greek chorus, their conversations acting as a commentary on the action and the dilemmas everybody faces. Again, they don’t offer answers as such, but thoughts to consider, as well as demonstrating the closeness and depth of affection in their relationship.
By the end of the film, everybody has moved on – with one exception. Little Yuri is back where she started and the final shot is shattering. It’s at that point that the strength and subtlety of Kore-eda’s storytelling becomes apparent. The film and its characters have got right under your skin, delivering a final punch that is soft but leaves a deep emotional bruise. Shoplifters is an earthquake to the heart.
Shoplifters review by Freda Cooper, November 2018.
