Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters was 2018’s winner for the prestigious Palm d’Or at Cannes. It was up against a number of impressive films from 2018’s wonderful collection of very original and true to life films. Koreeda has been perfecting this ‘accurate portrayal of human living’ genre ever since his 2004 movie Nobody Knows and, in my opinion, making his best work with Still Walking in 2008. Though these did not blow anyone away enough for a Palm d’Or at the time, perhaps Koreeda was simply ahead of his time. Or perhaps the international stage wasn't able to relate to the tribulations of poor Japanese famillies. Nonetheless, Shoplifters is just as layered with notions of artifice and love and desperation and suppression.
So what makes this new film different? In Shoplifters, Koreeda again returns habitually to exploring the concept of ‘family’. At least, for all intents and purposes, the characters of this film are a family. They are not bonded by blood though. They are bonded, at once, by their denial of this fact and the belief that they can rely on one another always. But in the initial circumstance, by their impoverished desperation for shelter and love. There is the father figure, Osamu and the mother figure, Nobuyo. A grandmother, who guilt trips her late husband’s wife’s children into giving her money, and an older daughter figure who works at a place where men watch her engage in soft porn.
Then there’s the young son, Shota, who plays the role of Osamu’s apprentice shoplifting things that Osamu will later sell. One night, Osamu and Shota find a little girl who has obviously been abused by her parents and takes her to be a new member of their family. Koreeda’s films often seem to always be laced with characters that are trying not to go against the grain or ‘look’ out of place. This family however, secretly live a life that is in almost every way going against the grain, they just act like it’s totally normal. Juri, the little girl, in fact is the dangerous impetus for helping this pseudo-normal to come crashing down around them.
At first, I began watching the film as if it was just another normal depiction of a poor family going about its daily tribulations and enjoying the way I could relate to the characters. I know that Osamu and Shota are shoplifting, but I understand it, as they are my protagonists and obviously are under the thumb of their own poverty. Then they steal the girl because she was hurt. But they don’t tell anyone and she begins shoplifting too. The grandmother dies and she is buried in the yard. I find out there were other grandmothers and everything spirals into a dysfunctional pretense. But, and it’s a very important but, because I have only felt this because of Koreeda’s skillful directorial flare, I am still in love with the family.
But it’s that gradual marble dropping feeling that makes the journey so surreal. I feel dubbed somewhat to be made to connect to these characters who are not who they say they are. Yet, I have great understanding and empathy for their situation simply because of how accurately family life has been portrayed and acted. There’s a brief intimate moment where the younger women lies on the grandmother’s lap and the grandmother looks down and tells her what a nice nose she has. She replies stating that she never liked her nose. It’s a subtle encapsulation of what family is for; to dampen our insecurities and for reassurance.
In the end, it’s clear that the pretense can’t continue and that they are all in a crisis. For the viewer though, Koreeda reminds us that all of us have our secrets and pretenses, but the thing that is most important to keep sacred and true, is that family bond. This is an eerily touching film that delves into its characters bruised hearts and minds, instructing us to never judge. Its freeing to feel that for the most part of the film, but it’s equally painful to watch it fall apart.