Review: Shoplifters

Image courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

The films of Hirokazu Kore-eda are often dramas centering on families or children that are humanistic, simple in nature and alternately hopeful and melancholic. This description certainly fits the director's latest work - the Palm d'Or winner "Shoplifters," which ranks as one of his very best and saddest.

At more that one point during the film, a question is posed: Does giving birth automatically make one a mother? Also, are the people to whom you are born necessarily your family or can one have a say in such matters? We only gradually learn the answer to these questions as the relationships between the film's central six characters are revealed in occasionally startling, but also moving, ways.

As the film opens, Osamu (Lily Franky) and Nobuyo (Ando Sakura) stumble upon a young girl named Juri (Miyu Sasaki), who has seemingly been abandoned by her quarreling parents and is hungry. They take her back to their ramshackle home for a meal, and there she meets the family's other members - a boy named Shota (Jyo Kairi), a woman named Aki (Matsuoka Mayu) and a grandmother (Kiki Kilin).

Prior to this scene, it has been established that the family lives hand to mouth, apparently appears to be squatting in their home, and Osamu and Shota have mastered the art of shoplifting from local stores. Although several of the family members are concerned that someone will come looking for Juri - and someone eventually does - they decide to let her stay and become part of the family.

Osamu and Nobuyo reconcile their choice with the concept that what they've done is not kidnapping since they are not asking for a ransom. And for a while, the six people operate as a family. There's a lovely scene in which they visit the beach and some charming bonding moments between Shota and Juri, especially during a scene in which a kindly shopkeeper catches them in the act of stealing and makes a compromise. But an accident occurs and the family is paid a visit by the authorities.

"Shoplifters" is a powerful film that creeps on you. It's the type of picture - similar to Kore-eda's other movies - in which little plot can be found, but small moments add up to big ones. In this case, it's a farewell between two family members involving a bus trip that is especially heartbreaking and another character left alone on a balcony to ponder where they've ended up. Both involve children - one looking back and the other looking forward.

Kore-eda has long been called the heir apparent to the great Yasujiro Ozu, one of Japan's great filmmakers whose works are also deeply rooted in humanism and offer profound revelations through intimate character studies. Kore-eda's first two films - "Maborosi" and "After Life" - have long been my favorites in his oeuvre - and while I've enjoyed the numerous films he has made between those two and his latest, "Shoplifters" is easily his best work since then. It's a heartbreaker, but one in which the emotions have been earned by its extraordinary cast and Kore-eda's obvious talents as a filmmaker.