Shoplifters [Manbiki kazoku] ***** (2018, Lily Franky, Sakura Andô, Mayu Matsuoka, Jyo Kairi, Miyu Sasaki) – Movie Review

Writer-director Hirokazu Koreeda’s warm and wonderful Shoplifters (2018) won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018. It focuses on a poor Japanese family of small-time thieves, shoplifting to make ends meet, who take in a troubled young girl they find outside in the cold. This act of kindness has devastating bitter-sweet repercussions for the family.

Koreeda’s socially conscious film is the Bicycle Thieves of its country and its era. A brilliantly alive film, burning with slow passion and bursting with life, it is aware of every nuance of its story, characters and situations. The acting is so ‘real’ it does not seem like acting at all, giving the film a verite documentary feel.

It is so ‘real’ that you feel you are in the same room with the characters and sharing your life with them. Of course, you just know that, eventually, the shoplifting is not going to go well, but when that happens the result is surprising anyway, and it is painfully impactful. It is such a subtle, generous, heart-breaking film, memorable in every way.

It stars Lily Franky, Sakura Andô, Mayu Matsuoka, Jyo Kairi and Miyu Sasaki.

Shoplifters [Manbiki kazoku] is nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Motion Picture – Foreign Language. It is nominated as Film of the Year and Foreign Language Film of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards 2019.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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