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.
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
