SHOPLIFTERS

Japan, 2018, 121 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda.

Japanese director, Hirozaku Koreeda, is a specialist in making films about ordinary people, opening up this world of ordinary people, of characters who are less well-off than the cinema audiences, but enabling those audiences to see how the other half live, their struggles for survival, the effect on their lives.

Koreeda has explored how children, orphaned, might organise their lives and survive for some time, a film called Nobody Knows. Of the film is in this vein include, Like Father, Like Son, Our Little Sister.

This time he invites us into a world of survivors, men and women, children, and an old grandmother.

But, the title is telling. While the group finds it hard to survive, one of their means is literal shoplifting. Almost immediately, we are in a supermarket, the father doing the shopping with a basket, a young boy scouting the goods, making signals, hiding things in his clothing, walking out of the store undetected.

The next sequence adds to the complexity of the story. On the way home, they call into a store and buy some croquettes, eating them happily as they walk through rather dingy streets, but glimpsing a little girl looking forlorn, offering her a croquette, overhearing her parents arguing about her. They take her to the very busy house, give her something more to eat, she responds happily, they try to take her home but are disturbed and bring her back to the family, her staying the night, the giving her a name, dressing her, keeping her – and they will later be accused by the police of kidnapping.

We get an opportunity to look briefly at the story of each of the characters at home. The shoplifting boy is an orphan. The grandmother presides – but we find her going to a wealthy family and getting a subsidy, later learning that there were some sordid aspects in her children’s marriage, including infidelity and murder. A young adult daughter branches out to console men clients. Despite an exhilarating train journey and day at the beach, life is hard.

While what seems to have been something of a genial storytelling, despite the shoplifting at the opening of the film, it moves into more dramatic, or melodramatic situations, moving also towards resolutions which may well be for the better for each of the characters but make some harrowing demands on them.

1. Winner of the Palme D’ Or in Cannes? The work of the director, his career, the Japanese settings, humane and his sense of humanity, stories of ordinary people?

2. The title, the indication of the way of life of the central characters, lives of joy and sadness?

3. The city locations, the poorer homes, the streets, the supermarkets, the train ride, the beach, the police precincts? The musical score?

4. The situation, the Father and the son in the supermarket, the system for buying and the child shoplifting? Their going home, buying the croquettes, seeing the little girl, overhearing the parents and their squabble, taking the child home, the decision to keep her (later the police accusing them of kidnapping), feeding the little girl, returning her but letting her stay, overnight, her wetting the bed, the food, giving her a name, keeping her, bringing joy to the life of everyone in the house?

5. The details of life in the house, the bonds between everyone, men and women, young and old, the grandmother and the focus on her? Jobs, the father losing his job by injury, at home? His sexual relationship with his wife? The gradual information about past, marriage and jealousy, murder? The revelation about the money motivations, the grandmother going to the family, getting a subsidy from them? The mixture of humanity and the touches of greed?

6. The focus on little girl, her age, response, her name, dressing her, the food, and the joyful expedition to the beach?

7. The young boy, his skill and method for shoplifting, his coming from an institution, at the beach, with the little girl, the storekeeper warning him not to train the little girl as a shoplifter?

8. The parents, the sexual relationship, the injury, no work? The care for both of them for the little girl?

9. The personality of the grandmother, her visit to the house? The suddenness of her death? The concealing of the deaths, the financial implications, not wanting the government to know? The bequests?

10. The boy, resuming shoplifting, the pursuit, his fall and injury, in hospital, his having done this deliberately, to get out of shoplifting? The visits to the hospital?

11. The police, the interviews, interrogations, the revelation about the truth and the marriage and the death? The kidnapping? The mother going to prison? The role of the grandmother?

12. The boy, the father keeping him, their sharing, his giving him back, at the bus stop?

13. Little girl, returned, the family, the different name, her future?

14. The effect on the audience of experiencing all of this?