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"Shoplifters", which won the Palme d'Or in Cannes, examines the lives of people that society has thrown in the trash.
(photo credit: courtesy)
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At first glance, the Hirokazu Koreeda Shoplifters, who won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, seem to be the story of a hard-working Tokyo family struggling to pay their bills and taking care of a girl victim of her parents violent.
But as the story unfolds, it turns out to be darker and more complex. To avoid stereotypes, Koreeda, whose films often deal with the meaning of family, examines the lives of people that society has thrown in the trash. The truth within the family is not revealed at once, but is an integral part of the story, which plays almost like a contemporary Japanese interpretation of Italian neo-realist cinema of the 1940s.
The film begins with Osamu Shibata (Lily Franky), the father of the clan, taking his beautiful, mischievous son, Shota (Jyo Kairi), on a strategic stealing expedition. They buy a little and fly a lot, but all they take is food. On their way back, they see Yuri, alone, freezing on her balcony and bringing her home. It's not really a house and it's certainly not the sparkling and prosperous Tokyo we're used to seeing in movies. Three generations are grouped in one piece. Osamu is employed in construction, but the work is not stable and when he gets injured at work, his employer finds a way to avoid paying him compensation. Osamu's wife, Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), works in an industrial laundry, garnering everything of value in the clothes she's ironing, a way to compensate for the fact that her work is being cut off. Her half-sister, Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) has the age to attend university, but she is working on some kind of television show, dressed in a school uniform that's a good thing. she withdraws gradually. The matriarch of the family, Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), helps them to support themselves with her meager pension and begging for money from her late husband's second family. Shota does not go to school, but helps, especially by flying.
Welcoming a child, and this one can be accused of kidnapping, seems reckless, but when they see the girl's bruises, they realize that their little cold house can be a sanctuary for her.
Nothing really looks like it seems in this complex film and just when you think you have understood the situation, Koreeda is launching a new curve to the viewer. The film is a nuanced critique of contemporary Japan, where entire families, even working families, are falling through the cracks. We watch the events unfold from the point of view of the characters and it seems quite understandable that they steal and run the risk of being accused of kidnapping. Koreeda even humanizes the shopkeeper to whom they fly most often, highlighting the tragedy in a story without clear bad guys but with a lot of transgressive behavior.
The casting is consistently brilliant, especially Ando, as a woman whose maternal urges are strangely expressed and Lily Franky as her devoted and gaily amoral husband. Franky played a key role in Koreeda's 2013 film, Like Father, Like Son, the factual story of two families discovering that their sons were traded at birth. Kirin Kiki, a great actress who plays the grandmother, has also worked with the director in the past, in films such as Our Little Sister and After the Storm, and who also starred in Sweet Bean. The children actors are surprisingly natural.
For Koreeda, one of the best contemporary Japanese directors, this film is a thematic return to the 2004 film Nobody Knows, which tells the story of a 12-year-old boy who supports his younger brothers and sisters after their mother abandoned them. Despite the virtues of this film, however, I did not go as much as I did, neither to this film, nor to any of his other films. Here, social criticism has a slightly didactic quality. Koreeda has a great talent for creating a world and attracting audiences, but I was often aware of the lessons that the film was trying to teach about the flaws of capitalism.
Nevertheless, thieves on display are worth seeing for their story-rich twists and phenomenal acting.
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