Shoplifters

Shoplifters is a sensitively portrayed look at a charming surrogate family living on the fringe of society, making a compelling case for the way families we create or fall in with can sometimes be more meaningful and satisfying than the families we are born into.

The cinema of Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda from Nobody Knows (2004), Like Father, Like Son (2013), Our Little Sister (2015), and After the Storm (2016), have all had a similar thread underlying these stories of unconventional families created out of genuine kindness under crisis situations who share a special bond that goes deeper than blood relations.

Cannes Palme d’Or winner, Shoplifters, focuses Kore-eda’s themes of what it means to be a family more powerfully than any of his previous films, while also commenting on Japan’s social class system. Along with Our Little Sister, it’s one of his best films.

Where Our Little Sister was a gentle upbeat feel-good story of sisters living in their mother’s ancestral home who take in a young girl after the death of their father; their half-sister, Shoplifters is decidedly less optimistic showing a bleaker more tragic heartrending side of humanity.

What at first appears to be a poor family of part-time vagrants living together in a packed shared accommodation among urban dwellings in a Japanese neighborhood, is slowly revealed to be a loving group of outcasts who have come together to help each other for mutual benefit. They share everything and despite the extremely difficult living arrangement, the group seems to thrive and enjoy each other’s company, engaging in family outings and activities.

A kind-hearted and generous low-income couple in their 30s and 40s, Osamu (Lily Franky) and Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), living with an elderly lady, Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), left to fend for herself by her own family, have adopted a young boy, Shota (Jyo Kairi) who was abandoned, and a teen girl who works at a strip theatre. Osamu the father figure teaches the boy the art of shoplifting to supplement their meager earnings.

When they come across a 5-year-old girl, Yuri (Miyu Sasaki) who is neglected and abused by her mother and left out in the cold without food, Osamu decides to help her and takes her into his care. Yuri quickly thrives on the love and affection she receives from her new makeshift family. But when a news story appears on TV that a small girl has gone missing that fits Yuri’s description, the couple tries to return her to the parents. However, whether out of compassion for the girl or maybe for selfish reasons, doing the right thing becomes morally complicated.

The group of outcasts (shoplifters) forge a real bond and sense of belonging that’s stronger than any family they ever had. But when the police discover them, the consequences for everyone as the state returns the children to their real families are devastating. What Shoplifters does so well is show us how people from all ages and walks of life are being marginalized by a society that values individual gain and material wealth over human kindness and genuine affection.

Hirokazu Kore-eda uses his abundance of reality shooting style and dense interior locations that instantly puts you in the tight living spaces of typical Japanese homes. Visually, the film is dedicated to its characters and a high level of detail in their crammed surroundings.

Shoplifters is thought provoking and revealing of Japan’s growing threat to families for whom an addiction to social media and online living is causing them to neglect their everyday real-life existence instead of enhancing it.

JP