Bro­ker – first-look review

Deep in Hirokazu Koreeda’s typ­i­cal­ly gen­tle yet pierc­ing new-nor­mal fam­i­ly dra­ma Bro­ker, one char­ac­ter lis­tens to Aimee Mann’s hushed bal­lad ​‘Wise Up’. Like any red-blood­ed cit­i­zen of the plan­et Earth, she imme­di­ate­ly thinks of Paul Thomas Ander­son using that sound­track cut for the emo­tion­al cli­max of his mosa­ic mas­ter­piece Mag­no­lia, referred to as ​“that movie” which didn’t total­ly make sense but nonethe­less con­nect­ed on a deep­er lev­el of per­son­al resonance.

There’s noth­ing so baro­que­ly metaphor­i­cal as a rain of frogs in Koreeda’s lat­est, linked instead by the imper­fect rela­tion­ships between lone­ly peo­ple in search of some­one to hold on to in a chaot­ic, indif­fer­ent world. The woman hav­ing a moment of intro­spec­tion with Mann is Soo-jin (Bae Doona), a law enforce­ment offi­cial inves­ti­gat­ing a doozy of a moral thick­et, in which aban­don­ment can be an act of con­flict­ed com­pas­sion and child traf­fick­ing might just be an expres­sion of love.

She mon­i­tors and lat­er inserts her­self in this crim­i­nal scheme with uncom­mon­ly decent inten­tions, its finan­cial motives melt­ing away lit­tle by lit­tle to leave a naked grasp at nur­tur­ing, in what­ev­er form it may come. She’s duty-bound to break it up; Koree­da wouldn’t dream of cast­ing such stark judge­ment on his char­ac­ters, doing the best they can with what lit­tle they’ve got.

In the open­ing min­utes, So-young (Lee Ji-eun, her eyes going on for­ev­er) has left her infant in one of the ​‘baby box­es’ found at church­es around South Korea, no-ques­tions-asked drop-off points for moth­ers unable or unwill­ing to raise their off­spring them­selves. She leaves a note that she’ll be back for lit­tle Woo-sung, unaware that this means he will be made inel­i­gi­ble for adop­tion and most like­ly live out the rest of his boy­hood in an orphanage.

Sang-hyeon (the great Song Kang-ho) and Dong-soo (Gang Dong-won) have built a spot­ti­ly eth­i­cal hus­tle around this coun­ter­in­tu­itive quirk of pro­to­col, sell­ing these bun­dles of joy to lov­ing par­ents instead of let­ting them lan­guish in the sys­tem – except that unlike most of the moth­ers who promise to return, So-young real­ly does.

Sang-hyeon con­vinces her to go along with their enter­prise, explain­ing that find­ing a good home is much eas­i­er when poten­tial adopters can see that the mother’s on board. (A chunk of the sale fee sweet­ens the deal for her.) So begins an improb­a­bly heart­warm­ing road trip, as the three set off en route to Woo-sung’s prospec­tive par­ents, joined by a sev­en-year-old escap­ing the same group home they’re all try­ing to avoid. The chance at col­lec­tive redemp­tion presents itself almost too tidi­ly, though the messi­ness of the fol­low-through coun­ter­acts any inkling that Koreeda’s gam­ing the nar­ra­tive for easy poignancy.

Three adults and one child, all bruised in their own appre­hen­sive­ly revealed ways, take refuge in each other’s slow-form­ing sur­ro­gate love with­out melo­dra­mat­ics or pathos-bait­ing con­trivance. The serene acoustic gui­tar pluck­ing waft­ing through the scenes per­fect­ly match­es the low-key dev­as­ta­tion that ger­mi­nates as the film pro­gress­es, sweet and sor­row­ful while stop­ping short of brow­beat­ing sentimentality.

When Soo-jin final­ly steps in and gets So-young under her thumb, we realise just how invest­ed we’ve become in the suc­cess of what the cop must remind us – and her­self – is tech­ni­cal­ly a human smug­gling operation.

But nothing’s so black-and-white in Koreeda’s uni­verse of soft­ened greys, whether it’s a more com­pli­cates stance on abor­tion than a first glance might sug­gest, or the flesh­ing-out of the new par­ents even­tu­al­ly enter­ing the pic­ture for Woo-sung. Everyone’s reach­ing for a sol­id sys­tem of sup­port. In the most mer­ci­ful cas­es, allowed by Koree­da with admirable gen­eros­i­ty of feel­ing, their out­stretched lives can latch on to one another.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.