This Japanese drama is about a family of liars, cheats and thieves. Surprisingly, they’re also its heroes.
Starring Lily Franky, Sakura Andô, Mayu Matsuoka; directed by Hirokazu Koreeda; 121 minutes in Japanese subtitles; R for some sexuality and nudity.
In “Shoplifters,” we meet two of the main characters as they ply the family trade in a Tokyo food market: Dad Osamu (Lily Franky) gives young son Shota (Kairi Jyo) the high sign, blocking a clerk’s view while the boy snags as much merchandise as he can before fleeing.
Is this a father-son lark or something sinister? Writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda leans into the ambiguity in a movie that feels cozy and affirming at first but undergoes intriguing shifts as information comes to light.
On their way home, Osamu and Shota encounter a little girl named Yuri (Miyu Sasaki), whom they bring home to feed. Soon she’s part of a tight-quartered family with Osamu’s wife, Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), Shota’s sister, Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), and grandmother Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), the family matriarch, whose small house the family has colonized as squatters with benefits, despite their construction and laundry jobs in the city.
With its air of intimacy and fractious affections, “Shoplifters” feels like “The Borrowers” by way of Yasujiro Ozu, a discreetly observed drama about resourcefulness, loyalty and resilience in an era of obscene income inequality and a fatally frayed civic safety net.
Although the protagonists are liars, cheats and thieves, Kore-eda’s sympathies are clearly with people he perceives as forced to subsist on what they can take from wealthier institutions.
But as “Shoplifters” proceeds, Kore-eda throws in more troubling questions, making a winsome film something far more complex.
He harks back to his harrowing 2004 film, “Nobody Knows,” about a family of abandoned children, applying more rigor to a story whose ethical quandaries are presented with equal parts compassion and toughness.
The deeply flawed heroes of “Shoplifters” aren’t always right. But they’re not wrong, either, as they make their own contract with one another, since society has cruelly written them out.
From left: Sakura Ando, Miyu Sasaki and Franky in “Shoplifters.”
Kiki Kirin in “Shoplifters.” Photo by Magnolia Pictures