It doesn’t mean it’s the greatest movie of all time, but Palme D’Or winners of the Cannes Film Festival usually do mean that that film is special in some sort of way. The 2018 winner of that award is Shoplifters, a film from Japan by acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda. After watching shoplifters, it’s easy to see why it was chosen among the many festival entries, using simple emotions to tell a meandering slowly revelatory story about family.
The movie opens with Shota (Jyo Kairi) and Osamu (Lily Franky) Shabata going to a supermarket, taking an item or two. You see, this family is poor, living in a tiny house with 3 other women: grandma Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), mother Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), and twentysomething Aki (Mayu Matsuoka). Their condition is tough, but stable, with each member pulling their weight to make ends meet. One night, Osamu stumbles on a preschooler, Yuri (Miyu Sasaki), outside in the cold, hiding from her parents who clearly neglect her. Osamu takes her in, warms her, and feeds her; however, Yuri’s parents eventually notice she is gone, and start searching for her.
Shoplifters is the best argument that family is the people you choose, not the group of people you were born into. Each of these people have been cast away by either their family or by society in general, due to the strict rules or self absorbed family members. Plus, since these people understand what they don’t have, they are more appreciative when the find what they want: kids, love, or simply companionship. Koreeda does a great job showcasing each of these 6 lost souls interacting with each other in different ways, cementing the bond they’ve created between each other. Simple moments like showing someone what a hug means or playing a game with a kid resonate with quiet but potent poignancy.
Shoplifters meanders around for a while, making you wonder where this is all going. However, opening with the supermarket swiping does leave something ominous in the back of your head: this living situation is completely fragile, built around an elderly pension, theft, and basically kidnapping. Trust is key to every family unit, and there are signs that other stuff is going on when the kids start to question the 3 adults. You wonder why Osamu and Nobuyo have never had kids, and what keeps them so close to one another. How does Hatsue keep coming up with money, more than even her pension? And Shota, after seeing Yuri integrated into his family, wonders if he was taken under similar circumstances. All it takes is one false move or dangerous situation and attention from powerful outsiders to split everyone apart. And not just split apart by law, all the secrets will come to the forefront, breaking that trust that has so well been crafted. I won’t reveal what happens here, but the ending is honest, and will leave you very conflicted in how you’re supposed to feel.
Context matters in Shoplifters. What the people do to survive is technically breaking the rules and dishonest, but it is being done to support a group of lost people who find solace in one another. What you feel about this situation probably says a lot about who you are as a person, so I’m gonna lock myself in a room and think about this for a LONG time…