Shoplifters

After filming several high-profile, slow-paced family dramas, the director Hirokazu Koreeda finally broke through the comfort zone he set up for himself in recent years. Through more skillful techniques and a more sagacious perspective, the tenacity and courage in "Nobody Knows" finally yielded an unhappy but very profound ending in the film. Even though the reconciliation between the individual and the world is no longer given hope, Hirokazu Koreeda's past unsolved thoughts resonate in a virtual space.. Therefore, it is not a bragging to call this film his masterpiece.

I'm putting down 8/10 for a "rating", but basically I have no idea how to put a movie like this numerically in comparison with just about any Hollywood effort. It really belongs on a different scale entirely. My wife and I are just back from seeing it at our local art-cinema theater and we liked it very much. Stylistically, for other recent movies it's close to "Roma" and also the American indie film "Leave No Trace" as bittersweet, unhurried explorations of quite real human beings working hard to survive.

"Shoplifters" follows the lives of a makeshift "family" living in the underside of an unnamed Japanese city (the particular place isn't important). The adults scrape by with low-security, low-paid jobs, the grandma has a small pension income, and the kids are vagabonds. They get by in a crowded, ramshackle tenement and the two kids are busy picking up the techniques of petty shoplifting from the adults. We slowly learn that almost none of them are actually related; they've haphazardly chosen each other to live with in a framework a little outside the margins of normal society. All of them, in some way, have left or been taken out of abusive or dangerous previous relationships. Throughout their exploits, told by a long series of short vignette scenes, is that they indeed feel close bonds but that their "family" is built, not by blood, but by the constant kindness they show towards each other. They survive on the margins, but they love and are loved.

The second and much more subliminal big message I took away from this film was its ambience: it's quiet. Scenes that would -- in a Hollywood film -- predictably lead to shouting matches or displays of anger or confrontations with authority, *never* take that cheap overdramatized route here. When confronted with tough questions, the main characters answer reflectively and with spare honesty. Even out on the streets with traffic and lots of people around, it's quiet. What a change.

Toward the end of the film, the main characters are being patiently interviewed by social services staff in a series of magnetically powerful scenes. The "family" members' answers are often startling: "Why were you teaching your son to shoplift?" "I ... didn't know anything else to teach him." or: "Didn't you take your grandma and threw her away?" "No. Someone else threw her away; we took her in." or: "The child belongs with her mother." "No. Giving birth doesn't make her a mother." From small glimpses like this, a window opens into an entire world of human nature.

A small family of small-scale thieves finds a lost girl on the outskirts of a cold street and decides to give her shelter.

Enter with this film waiting for a kind of family history with light teachings, however, I end up being a very special work full of sweet moments and at the same time provocative, with ideas and messages that challenge us about our true definition of family and trust. With a sad and melancholic narrative that makes us feel small moments of beauty and union, but little by little begins to reveal layer by layer on a more bittersweet and human truth.

Filmed in an excellent way with a cinematography designed to stay around the eyes of youngsters, with a soft and melancholic soundtrack that perfectly complements the scenes. The performances are fantastic from the entire cast, especially the children, who give a realistic and humane representation when it comes to their performances. The script is fantastic and human, teaching them a hard reality and difficult to grasp many times by our intangible minds, people who try to survive day by day through bad actions, but still try to keep their intentions pure and good.

A film quite unique, original and emotional, full of hard and sad moments that move us completely but eventually end up revealing a new truth different from what we believed, highly recommended without a doubt.

Excellently scripted and full of impressive subtleties, Shoplifters is a harrowing look at a working-class family in Tokyo, in the business of trying to simply make ends meet day by day. At first glance this may seem like just a story of this family resorting to petty crime, but as the plot gradually unfolds the reasons for the behaviour and decisions of each character is revealed, and al the dots begin to connect amidst this struggle.

Certainly seeing some of the characters getting involved in decidedly immoral behaviour- for example, the shoplifting carried out by the young boy and his father (as the title indications) and one young lady making a living off involvement in the porn industry, can be uncomfortable to see and it does present the characters in this film as morally dubious. But the whole situation that these people are in, and partially choose to create themselves, is eventually presented to the audience with unassuming subtlety, which is beautiful to watch. The overall tone of this film is fairly grim, and there is definitely raw emotional power to many scenes, but the acting and the script never at any point becomes overly sentimental or tragic. The scenarios and emotions that each character faces is really presented as it is, but of course with much delicacy.

This film may be relatively slow-paced and not visually stunning, but is breathtaking nonetheless. It's no wonder why it managed to win the Palme D'or! It's definitely going to end up as one of the best films of the year and will probably be recognised as a classic long in the future. Regardless of which culture you're from, I highly recommend checking this film out. It should deeply resonate with and impress any film lover.

Watched in official En Competition at the Festival De Cannes 2018 on the 14th of May. My favourite film of the festival of the titles in competition films screened, all round excellent performances with deft direction, superbly written this film benefits from being written by a humanist director following in the steps of previous masters like De Sica and Bresson. I really cannot recommend this film highly enough, social realism that shakes you to your heart breaks, an instant modern classic. Ten out of ten.