Shoplifters – first look review

It takes about five min­utes before the com­fort­ing twang of cof­fee-table acoustic jazz drifts from the sound­track of Shoplifters, the lat­est from that Japan­ese man­u­fac­tur­er of cin­e­mat­ic com­fort blan­kets, Hirokazu Koree­da. It’s become some­thing of a sig­na­ture for a direc­tor who has made the lilt­ing, feath­erlight com­e­dy-dra­ma his stock in trade, and it works like gang­busters in express­ing his lan­guid, free-and-easy mode of sto­ry­telling. But a strange thing hap­pens this time around, as the melod­ic fret­work sud­den­ly gets blast­ed by an effects ped­dle and shifts from the major to the minor, but it’s only in the film’s final reels that we dis­cov­er that this may have been a sub­tle har­bin­ger of things to come.

The open­ing scene sees Koree­da reg­u­lar lead­ing man Lily Franky as mis­chie­vous patri­arch Osamu who is joined by a young boy, Shota (Jyo Kairi), in nab­bing sup­plies from a gro­cery store. They’ve got their method­ol­o­gy and hand sig­nals down pat, and their heist comes off so clean­ly that this is obvi­ous­ly an occu­pa­tion more than a one-time scam. With spoils in hand and cel­e­bra­to­ry cro­quettes too, the pair see maudlin tot Yuri (Miyu Sasa­ki), sat alone on a bal­cony in the freez­ing cold.

With the same benign aban­don that pow­ers their shop­ping trips, they snatch her too, this time with a view to cheer­ing her up, ply­ing her with food and then swift­ly return­ing her. But, when Yuri arrives home to meet the fam­i­ly, and it’s dis­cov­ered that she’s been the vic­tim of abuse, it’s decid­ed that she stays. And it’s not kid­nap­ping if the par­ents don’t ask for a ransom.

And so we fol­low the lives of this rag-tag crew as they scrape togeth­er a pit­tance from menial jobs and sup­ple­ment their bud­get through a bit of light rob­bery. Although they all appear as a typ­i­cal hap­py fam­i­ly who are con­tent to mud­dle through the hard day in return for the gift of their cosy co-habi­ta­tion, there are hints that the ties that bind are start­ing to fray. Osamu gen­tly cajoles Shota into refer­ring to him as ​“papa”, but despite their phys­i­cal close­ness, there’s a firm resis­tance which hints that all is not what it seems.

The title tells us point blank that this is a crime movie, and it is, but not in the way we ini­tial­ly imag­ine it to be. Koree­da uses this case study to deliv­er a broad­er point about the sad fact that we don’t have the abil­i­ty to chose our own fam­i­ly. We get what we’re giv­en. As one char­ac­ter says, ​“The only way to become a moth­er is to give birth” which reduces the act of life-giv­ing to a cold process, one where love and respon­si­bil­i­ty are very much out of the equa­tion. The film pos­es the ques­tion: what if we could reject those enforced nat­ur­al rela­tion­ships and build a new fam­i­ly unit built on more stern emo­tion­al foun­da­tions, even if doing so involves a tee­ny bit of lawbreaking?

It’s cer­tain­ly in the upper ech­e­lons of the director’s back cat­a­logue, even if there’s some notice­able strain­ing to retain a sense of lev­i­ty through the dark­er pas­sages. It’s a lit­tle moral­is­tic at times, and there’s also a sense that Koree­da loves his char­ac­ters far too much to teach them a les­son or pun­ish them in any way. But the intu­itive ensem­ble work and the way he cap­tures domes­tic scenes are as impres­sive as ever, and the cher­ry on top is anoth­er film-steal­ing turn from the great Kirin Kiki as – you guessed it – a kind­ly granny.

And yes, do have a hearty meal before you see this one, as this is a film where peo­ple eat and eat and eat, and when they’re done, they eat some more.