When it starts, Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda’s new film Shoplifters seems innocuous. We see a young boy, Shota (Jyo Kairi), and the man we assume is his father, Osamu (Lily Franky). They walk around a store exchanging silent looks or tapping each other gently in what seems like meaningless signs of familiarity, but we soon realize they’re the rituals the pair uses to pull off their elaborate shoplifting.
It’s a jarring revelation, but even more jarring is the next scene, when they find and take home Yuri (Miyu Susaki) a young girl left out on a balcony in the cold by her abusive parents. From there, with Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) as the makeshift family’s mother, Hatsue Shibata (Kirin Kiki) as the grandmother and Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) as the aunt/big sister, Koreeda delivers a film that questions the meaning of family and what it means to be a good person.
While the stealing and kidnapping are the film’s first indications that these characters aren’t exactly good, it’s also apparent in every behavior and piece of the mise en scène: they and the space they inhabit are grubby and sloppy. Part of that is a result of five people living in a house meant for one old woman, but it’s also an expression of their strange dynamic. The confined space ensures each “family” member constantly encroaches on another’s space. They’re always pressed up against each other and one can just imagine the constant smell of mold and unwashed bodies hanging in the air.
However, that physical closeness isn’t just about bodily fluids, but bodily functions too. Someone is always eating when they’re together and it’s a sign not just of their slovenliness, but their closeness. In the film’s one love scene, the characters slurp noodles as foreplay and then barely take the time to chew or swallow before they kiss. It’s at once gross and intimate and much of the family dynamic follows suit.
What ultimately makes Koreeda’s film both strange and compelling is the alternate sense of morality it sets up and the way it subverts the traditional meanings of good and bad. Osamu and Noboyu may have essentially kidnapped these children, taught them to steal and taken advantage of a lonely old woman in the process, but they’ve also created a family unit for lost and/or damaged souls. Perhaps the most moving expression of their essential goodness is Noboyu’s reaction to Yuri’s scars. She starts by relating to her, showing a burn scar on her arm that looks just like Yuri’s while they bathe together. Even more telling, though, is the moment when Noboyu gently explains that even if Yuri’s parents tell her that they hurt her because they love her, real love is about affection and she hugs her tight to prove it. It’s a sweet moment (and one of many that should earn Ando’s complex, emotionally-resonant performance awards attention), but it’s no coincidence that it happens as the family burns the clothes they first found Yuri in, their first steps to deciding to hide their crime even after they learn that the police are looking for Yuri.
Given that threat, it’s no surprise that Kiki’s grandmother character is eventually proved right when she says their makeshift family can’t last forever. Indeed, everything falls apart so quickly and brutally in the film’s final minutes that it leaves the characters and the audience devastated. It’s difficult to explain exactly how without spoiling the plot’s final twists and reveals, but suffice to say it all hinges on Shota’s slow realization that just because these people take care of him doesn’t mean they’ve taught him the right way to live. Though Shota initially rejects including Yuri in the shoplifting, he eventually begins to include and teach her too until one day, a shopkeeper catches them. Rather than get angry, though, the man hands them some treats and then admonishes Shota, telling him that he shouldn’t let his sister steal. It’s a small moment, but it’s the moment that forces Shota to begin questioning what he’s been taught.
In the end, perhaps the most frustrating – and devastating – thing about Shoplifters is that if leaves us just as confused about what is right as the characters. Certainly seeing Osamu and Nobuyo essentially kidnap these children and teach them how to cheat and steal their way through life is morally reprehensible, but they also teach them love and self-worth. And maybe both Yuri and Shota will rightfully look back on their time in that little house as part of that makeshift family with horror, but maybe they’ll only survive because of it too.
Rating: 9/10
