Un affare di famiglia

Academy Award's official entry from Japan Shoplifters already earned so many awards and could even got every awards if there was no 'Roma'. Shoplifters questions us and left us to find the answer. The question could be seen in the trailer too. It was "Does giving birth automatically makes you a mother?" Though shoplifters is not made on this very topic. It's more than this.

They are family with husband, wife, and grandma and with two kids. They are poor. The man named Osamu (Lily Franky) shoplift everyday with his kid named Shota (Jyo Kairi). They return home and feel their stomach with the foods along with the other members of the family. One day returning home Osamu and Shota found a little girl (Miyu Sasaki) was outside of his home who had no one in their family then. They took her into their little house full with humanity and everybody welcome her. On the next day they went to return her but ended up hearing their parents were fighting over her existence and that's why they decided to took her into their house.

All of them in this family earn legally or illegally. They are not all innocent but they do have innocence. This film is adorable with it's realistic family goals. No matter what this family is actually happy over anything they has. But will not they try to do something which is acceptable? They are helpless too. They are free, they enjoy their time. The little girl who used to get beaten by her parents made a great relationship with this family too.

First of all there is nothing to spoil this film. The trailer showed almost all of this movie. This film is made on the views over a poor japaneese family. Hirokazu wanted us to feel for them. And it worked amazingly by his artistically work. Shoplifters never gives you any hard moments and this film has no center conflict. It's like a flowing river that has some stones in the middle. Shoplifters is an adorable journey throughout an road of humanity.

Amazing screenplay form Hirokazu and masterclass acting from all the cast gave me goosebumps in moments. There are moments that can make you cry and laugh at the same time. Shoplifters will be always live with my heart. And I liked it by watching 8.1 on imdb over 17k votes. It is really good to see normal people started liking this kind of arts too.

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.

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.

Greetings again from the darkness. We typically think of family as blood relatives, those affiliated by marriage or adoption, and those funky cousins (sometimes 'removed') that, according to the family tree, are supposedly related to us. Expert Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda (LIKE FATHER LIKE SON, 2013) presents a story that will have you questioning whether the strongest connection is blood, heart, or money.

We first witness 'father' Osamu Shibata (played by Lily Franky) and adolescent 'son' Shota (Jyo Kairi) in a well-coordinated shoplifting maneuver at the local grocery store. On the way home they stumble across a shivering child, maybe 4 or 5 years old, who has been seemingly abandoned by her parents. They take her home to warm her up and feed her, and it's here we discover the multi-generational family living in a tiny apartment. This family also consists of 'grandmother' Hatsue (an excellent Kirin Kiki), 'mother/wife' Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), and teenage daughter Aki (rising star Mayu Matsuoka).

When the family discovers signs of abuse on the little girl Yuri (Miyu Sasaki), they decide to keep her - less an informal adoption than an admission to the club. See, this family lives in poverty, and finds comfort in working odd jobs and shoplifting. They do bad things out of necessity, in a kind of twisted 'honor among thieves'. Each person, regardless of age is expected to contribute to the team. The eldest provides a steady income through her deceased ex-husband's pension, and by scamming mercy money from his second family. Osamu and Nobuyo have regular part time jobs, while Aki works in a sexy chat room. Shota polishes his shoplifting skills and even tiny Yuri begins to learn by watching him. Everyone contributes in what can be described as a pyramid scheme of petty cons.

As the film progresses, we get to know each of the characters and begin to care about them ... rooting for them to find success. Writer-Director Kore-eda draws us in with subtle scenes of interaction between the characters, each willing to sacrifice for the other. He raises the question on whether choosing one's family might create a stronger bond than those blood ties. What really seems to matter is where we feel we belong, and where are accepted.

The film won the Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, and it's likely due to the devastating and expert final act. In a dramatic shift in tone, true character is revealed - it's a shocking revelation on some fronts, and fully expected on others. Each family member has a backstory that slowly unfolds through the first two acts, and then abruptly slaps us upside the head as the film nears conclusion. There are many social aspects to be discussed after this one, including how the child welfare system (seemingly regardless of country) sometimes works against a child's best interest, even with the best intentions. This is one that will grab your heart and then stick with you for a while.

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.