Episode 59 has finally dropped, and here’s what I wrote about our first movie from that episode, Shoplifters, when I wrote about my favorite movies released in the U.S. in 2018.
Throughout his career, Hirokazu Kore-eda has specialized in telling humanistic dramas, as well as movies inspired by true stories – not the earth-shattering or world-shaking stories made into movies like, say, The Post, but what might be called human interest stories. My favorite film of his to date, Shoplifters, which won the Palme D’Or in 2018, combines both of those strands (though not based on any particular story, it is based on stories Kore-eda read about poverty and shoplifting).
Set in Tokyo, the film follows a poor family living in a run-down apartment; Osamu (Lily Franky), an out-of-work day laborer (he twisted his ankle), his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), who works for a laundry service, Nobuyo’s sister Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), who works as a stripper, and Shota (Kairi Jo), Osamu and Nobuyo’s son, or so he appears to be at first. They live with the apartment owner, Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), and they live off her pension and the food and other supplies Osamu and Shota shoplift from grocery stores. One night, as Osamu and Shota are walking home, they spot a little girl named Yuri (Miyu Sasaki), who seems to come from a family that abuses and neglects her. Osamu takes her in, and while Shota’s jealous at first of the attention Yuri gets, when Yuri, whose name is changed to Rin, joins in on the family’s shoplifting, he changes his mind, especially when he and the rest of the family learn Rin’s family never reported her missing. However, after one incident involving Shota, things start to unravel.
Kore-eda’s method is to let things develop at their own pace, without trying to force any melodrama on the proceedings. Sometimes, that low-key approach simply becomes too flat (as I felt the Kore-eda film most similar to this, 2004’s Nobody Knows, about a group of children abandoned by their mother, was).* However, with the plot twists Kore-eda gives us as the movie goes on, this low-key approach works. Kore-eda (who also edited the film), cinematographer Ryuto Kondo, and production designer Keiko Mitsumatsu show us the details of how this makeshift family lives, without rubbing our noses in it. Kore-eda also shows us how this family loves and takes care of each other, as well as Yuri, even as we later learn the truth about all of them. As with other of his films, Kore-eda is also making a critique of the Japanese government – how I can’t really get into without giving things away – but again, he does so in a low-key manner, so it never feels didactic. Instead, he involves us emotionally with the characters, without every tugging directly on our heartstrings. It helps the cast is all very good (Kiki, a Kore-eda regular, died a couple of months before the film was released in the U.S.). As more people fall into poverty, it becomes important for art to depict them in an honest way, and Shoplifters fits the bill.
*-At the time I wrote this, that’s how I felt about Nobody Knows. However, after rewatching the movie, I like it a lot more, and it’s up there with my favorite Kore-eda movies (along with After Life, Still Walking, Our Little Sister, Shoplifters, and Broker).
